This Finger Prick Covid-19 Test Kit Could Cost As Low As $ 1

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The Institut Pasteur, a biomedical research center based in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is set to produce a portable and affordable Covid-19 diagnostic test kit that can give results in minutes.
The institute is running a new company called DiaTropix, which has been partnering with five research organizations since March, including Mologic in the UK, to create the test kit.

Amadou Sall, director of the Institut Pasteur and DiaTropix, told CNN that the biomedical center hopes the kit will cost as little as $ 1 to purchase.

“It’s a very simple technology, like a pregnancy test that you can use anywhere at the community level, which is important for Africa,” he said.

According to Mologic, this rapid test kit does not require electricity or laboratory analysis.

Instead, it consists of a simple test strip housed in a plastic unit and uses a small sample of blood taken by pricking a finger, much like the tools used to test insulin. The blood is tested for antibodies related to the coronavirus and the result is displayed on the test strip.

A prototype of the kit was tested in June after raising funds from donors such as the UK Wellcome Trust and the UK government, Sall said. Once the regulatory checks are completed, it is planned to start manufacturing and distributing the kits.

The Covid-19 rapid test kits will first be available on the continent through governments and health organizations like the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Sall said.

“Ideally, we are working on how we can make (the kits) available to the general public. But for now the focus is on public health and then we will go to the self-test,” he said. he adds.

Sall said the goal was to deliver 10 to 15 million kits by February 2021.

Testing challenges

There are more than 1.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 across the African continent to date, according to the Africa CDC, with nearly half of those cases reported in South Africa.
The number of cases on the continent is relatively low compared to the rest of the world, but experts say weak testing in many African countries means some cases go unreported and untreated.

Dr Anderson Latt, an epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, told CNN that one of the challenges in tackling the virus on the continent is the shortage of test kits.

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PCR tests, considered the most accurate diagnostic test for Covid-19, are expensive to run and require both specialized supplies and lab technicians. At the start of the epidemic, only two laboratories – in South Africa and Senegal – were able to test the virus.

According to WHO, all 47 countries in its WHO African Region can now provide diagnostics. But in many places testing is still overdue.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has imported its PCR test kits from China but is unable to obtain the amount it needs.

The country recently announced a plan to develop a cheaper rapid test kit that will deliver results in less than 40 minutes and cost less than $ 25.

“There is a need for countries to work together in a coordinated fashion and make sure that test kits are available,” Latt said. “It’s really critical.”

The test kits under development by the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, he added, are a welcome addition.

Human capital

This is not the first time that the Institut Pasteur has been at the forefront of public health solutions to a pandemic.

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It has been making vaccines for about 80 years, Sall said, and offered diagnostic and epidemiological surveillance during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2016.

Sall, who is also the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Arboviruses and Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers in Senegal, believes the presence of the Covid-19 rapid test kits will help boost the economy.

“If you are faced with a situation where people cannot work because they are sick … it is very disruptive to the economy. And in that regard, invest in these initiatives (test kits) to promote access is a way to keep the economy going, “he said.

CNN’s Adeline Chen contributed to this report.

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