COVID-19 outbreak: CSIR develops low-cost, paper-based, 30-minute testing kit ‘Feluda’

India’s contemporary science and technology R&D organization, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) has developed a paper-based kit for mass COVID-19 testing. ‘Feluda’ has been developed by team of CSIR’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). Team is confident of Feluda’s accuracy at par with RT PCR-based tests. ‘Feluda’ has advantages over RT PCR-based tests in terms of speed and cost. Director General of CSIR, Dr Shekhar C Mande said, “It's three to five times cheaper then RT- PCR based test so in cost terms it is advantage and in amount of time taken in ‘Feluda’ something like 30 minutes when RT- PCR take around 4 to 5 hours.” CSIR is working with Tata Sons on this project. Testing kit has been named after fictional character from Satyajit Ray’s detective movie ‘Feluda’.