In order to increase the testing speed for the novel corona virus, ICMR has approved the use of TruenatTM beta CoV test on TruelabTM workstation – the machines used to investigate tuberculosis.
Issuing the guidelines, ICMR said that throat/nosal swabs will be collected in viral transport medium with virus lysis buffer to be provided with the kit. Also, it has been advised that all safety precautions should be taken care of, while performing the tests.
Besides this, a group of researches under the guidance of well-known immunologist Dr Gobardhan Das are doing a research at JNU for efficancy of BCG in order to fight against novel COVID-19, keeping in mind the hypothesis that the countries who had intense BCG vaccination like India, Japan and Portugal are better in number of deaths due to the novel virus as compared to other countries.
The researchers are working on BCG+ vaccine where COVID-19 proteins are being expressed into it which could potentially protect people from the novel virus.
