Mumbai: Everybody is involved in some way or the other in the fight against coronavirus. IIT which has produced illustrious persons and characters is also extending a helping hand in the fight. The IIT Alumni Council announced Thursday the setting up of a mega lab here. The lab will have the capacity of 10 million tests per month by July. The IIT Alumni Council also said it will soon start identifying partners for the lab.
Other initiatives of IIT Alumni Council
The council has already launched the first ‘COVID-19 Test Bus’ in the city earlier this month. The council also said trials have already begun on two of the supercomputer clusters in the megapolis. The city has seen more than 35,000 cases so far. Among the over 4,700 coronavirus deaths in the country, more than 2,000 people have died here alone.
While vaccine is still more than a year away in the best case scenario, the testing capacity has emerged as the biggest challenge. So the focus of the lab is to ensure timely testing. It will help in detecting, preventing and treating the disease with timely as well as affordable testing.
The council has also set up COVID-19 Taskforce. It is under the chairmanship of K Vijay Raghavan, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and the principal scientific officer to the Centre. The taskforce has 20 IIT directors as members, along with many other distinguished alumni of the institutes.
Official statement
“The IIT Alumni Council has decided to set up the largest genetic testing laboratory for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. This is after consulting global experts in many areas including virology and RT-PCR machine manufactures. Other issues discussed were test kits, pooling algorithms, AI, machine learning, robotics and microfluidics,” said Ravi Sharma, the president of the council.
“A dedicated team has already started work on designing the MegaLab Mumbai. The lab will have a capacity of 10 million RT-PCR tests per month. The MegaLab will be based on the end-to-end Kodoy indigenous technology stack. It will have adequate capacity for testing the entire population of Mumbai for infectious diseases,” Sharma added.
COVID-19 Taskforce
The ‘COVID-19 Taskforce’, was announced March 25 itself — the day the first phase of lockdown. It has various working groups involving over 1,000 dedicated alumni. They are trying to finding/creating appropriate solutions to fight the pandemic COVID-19.
The process of testing in MegaLab Mumbai
The ‘MegaLab Mumbai’ is the latest initiative of the IIT Alumni Council. The aim is to design and establish the largest genetic testing laboratory for COVID-19. The ‘MegaLab’ will be based on the end-to-end Kodoy indigenous technology stack.
PTI