ICMR approves OmiSure kit for Covid

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recently approved a kit named ‘OMISURE’. Omisure is an RT-PCR kit. It is used to detect Omicron, a COVID-19 variant. It is manufactured by Tata Medical & Diagnostics.

This kit has been designed and developed by Thermo Fisher, a US based company. It is manufactured by Tata. This kit uses S Gene Target Failure to detect Omicron. At present it is the only kit in India that uses this method for Omicron detection. The cost of this kit is Rs 240. The price of RT-PCR kits sold by government agencies ranges from Rs 20 to Rs 30.

The S gene is the spike gene of the COVID-19 virus. Mutations in this gene remove amino acids 69 and 70. This mutation helps them avoid the RT-PCR test. A kit or test that captures this gene deletion in a COVID-19 variant is commonly known as an S gene target failure kit or S gene drop detection kit.

The ‘S gene’ target failure or S gene drop out is one of the key indicators to establish the presence of an oomicron. In India, COVID screening for Rd, Rp, E and N genes. Even if one of these genes is found, the test result is still positive for COVID-19. The S gene test had not yet been conducted in the country as there was no need for it.