DCGI has granted Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), to Molbio Diagnostics’ platform Truenat for Nipah virus testing. Testing for the Nipah virus can now be performed rapidly on Truenat, a real-time PCR platform, on-demand, the firm based in Goa said in a statement.

This will result in early and fast diagnosis for effective management of the disease and containment of the spread of Nipah virus, it added.

Nipah virus (NiV) is an emerging zoonotic disease that causes severe disease in humans. Signs and symptoms range from asymptomatic to acute respiratory infection and fatal encephalitis.

"COVID-19 has brought out the importance of early and accurate testing for better disease management. We, at Molbio, believe that reliable point of care systems are crucial for ensuring universal access to timely testing for infectious diseases, and that is at the heart of our Truenat technology," Molbio Diagnostics CEO Sriram Natarajan stated.

The Truenat platform that gai­ned traction in the last year, has been designed and manufactured indigenously, is a portable, battery-operated and IoT-enabled point of care. The platform can display results in less than an hour and has been used to detect nearly 30 diseases including TB, COVID-19, dengue, chikungunya, hepatitis, HPV in the past.

Truenat is the first platform to be authorised by the Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) for Nipah virus testing, he added.

The R&D work on the Truenat test for the Nipah virus was first started in 2018 in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology, Pune (ICMR) to enable the detection of the infectious virus during outbreak situations, company said.

The ability to quickly deploy the platform to the point of need and the rapid testing capability make it a powerful tool in diagnosis and containment of the spread of the Nipah virus, it added.

Truenat, which is a battery-operated and IoT-enabled point of care RT-PCR platform, can test for nearly 30 diseases, and results take less than an hour.