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As States begin to open-up in a graded manner, Thermo Fisher Scientific has brought in its point-of-care Accula SARS-CoV-2 test. An RT-PCR test, it would provide results in 30 minutes.
The development comes even as companies import or develop in-house, self-use rapid antigen tests, that are not seen to be entirely reliable due to high levels of false negatives. RT-PCR is recognised as the industry gold standard and officials told Business Line. Accula could detect known virus variants as well.
Amit Chopra, Thermo Fisher Managing Director (India and South Asia), explained that their new testing platform combined “the accuracy of RT-PCR with the simplicity, convenience, and procedural familiarity of traditional rapid immunoassays.” Further, he added, it would “open new avenues of personal and public testing without compromising on accuracy.”
The product would be imported from the US and pricing, company officials said, depended on their customers – including pathlabs who could deploy the product at venues for celebrity events, sport and so on.
The Accula SARS-CoV-2 Test has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The product comprises a cassette (including 25 swabs and pipettes) and reusable, palm-sized Accula dock. The test uses nasal swab samples and provides reliable, qualitative results in approximately 30 minutes, the company said.
The product came into the Thermo Fisher fold through its acquisition of Mesa Biotech Inc (which developed Accula SARS-CoV-2 Test) in January 2021.
Operations of the $30 billion Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc are spread across healthcare, lifesciences, applied biosystems, pharmaceutical and biotech. The company has been engaged in about 250 projects across the world involved with vaccine discovery and therapeutics, he said.
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