Bhubaneswar, Jan 16: The Odisha government, the first state which has placed an order to procure 5 lakh Omicron testing kits, OmiSure, in the country. Tomorrow (Jan 17) these kits will reach here at the Capital City.
The state government has placed an order to procure 5 lakh Omicron testing kits, OmiSure, as the Covid-19 variant tally in the state crossed 100-mark on Jan 9. Girish Krishnamurthy, CEO and managing director of Tata Medical and Diagnostics Ltd. has earlier confirmed about the order. OmiSure specifically identifies Omicron without the need for genome sequencing.
OmiSure is the only test kit approved by the ICMR for RT-PCR detection of the Omicron variant. It targets 3 genes with a single tube, fully multiplexed assay in a unique design that identifies simultaneous S-gene Target Failure and S-Gene Mutation Amplification.
The state government’s order for a large number of Omicron testing kits came as director of health services Bijoy Mohapatra said Odisha may witness the peak in Covid-19 cases by the end of January.
