The Indian Institute of Technology Mandi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Government Medical College & Hospital (SLBSGMCH), Ner Chowk, Himachal Pradesh, on April 11 2020, to help tackle COVID-19 in the Himachal Pradesh region. Under this MoU, the Institute has extended its support to set up a real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) laboratory for diagnosing Coronavirus at SLBSGMCH.
For this purpose, IIT Mandi has already provided a real-time PCR machine along with few other equipment as well as trained personnel to SLBSGMCH. This is to set up the real-time PCR reactor and data analysis, which is one of the crucial steps for diagnosis, after Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) isolation.
This sophisticated instrument will be solely used for COVID-19 diagnosis and will help in ramping up the testing process by analysing 100 samples if run for 24 hours continuously. If required, it can be increased to the capacity of conducting up to 1000 samples per day for the detection of COVID-19. SLBSGMCH will start analysing the COVID-19 samples after getting approval from the ICMR.
