What is TrueNat? ICMR approves TB machines for COVID-19 tests

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on April 10, 2020 validated the usage of TrueNat, a diagnostic machine for Tuberculosis , for COVID-19 tests.  The council had approved the use of the tuberculosis testing machine for coronavirus screening tests on April 4. The TrueNat machines are used to test drug-resistant Tuberculosis (TB).

ICMR had recommended the use of the Truenat beta CoV test on Truelab Workstation as a screening test. It has also approved the use of US-FDA approved real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) systems such as GeneXpert and Roche Cobas- 6800/800 in emergency situations.

What is Truenat? 

•  Truenat is a small machine that is battery operated and requires minimal training. It can also be easily used in a smaller setting.

•  The sample of the throat and the nasal swab is collected by the trained technicians wearing personal protective equipment,

•  The machine can easily give the result between 30-60 minutes.

•  The machine can run up to 32-48 samples of multiple diseases such as COVID-19, HIV, and TB in a four-way.

•  Out of the available 800 machines, 150-200 are two-way and can easily handle 16-24 samples.

•  There are 50 machines and the remaining are single-way machines that can easily process 8-12 samples at a time.

•  The cost of a test on Truenat machines will be of Rs 1000-Rs.1500.

Molibo Diagnostics: Key Highlights 

•  Molbio Diagnostics manufactures Truenat machines.

•  It plans on expanding its manufacturing capacity and is awaiting the Government directives on the number of machines and tests that are needed in each state.

•  Malibo Diagnostics have already over 800 Truenat machines across India out of which 400 Truenat machines were in Government setups.

•  The testing platforms that were used for TB will remain the same but there will be a need to equip these centers with COVID-19 kits.

• As per the Molibo Diagnostics executive, close touch with states is continued in order to scale up the manufacturing of diagnostics machines.