The government has given nod to the country’s first health center/hospital Gonoshasthaya Kendra for production of the novel coronavirus-detection kits in full-scale to help fight against the outbreak of the virus.

“The government gave us approval to produce coronavirus-detection kits. We have already started the process to import raw materials for the kits,” Gonoshasthaya Kendra Dr founder Zafrullah Chowdhury told the media yesterday.

He said the raw materials and chemicals for the kits will reach Bangladesh from abroad within 8-10 days. Raw materials for the kit would reach Bangladesh from the UK within a week. Gonoshasthaya Kendra will produce 100,000 kits in the first phase with each kit costing Tk 200-Tk 250. However, the kits will only be supplied to the government, Dr Zafrullah infoirmed.

“We hope to be able to start a full-scale production of the coronavirus-detection kits within two weeks,” Zafrullah said.

Earlier on Tuesday night, Gonoshasthaya Kendra declared that they have developed ‘Rapid Dot Blot’ — a cheap testing kit that can examine samples to detect Covid-19 as fast as in 15 minutes.

A technical team of Gonoshasthaya-RNA Biotech Limited developed the test kits and its cost was estimated to be around Tk 2 crore. After two months of research, Prof Dr Bijon Kumar Sil, head of the department of Microbiology at the Gono Bishwabidyalay and his four associates Dr Nihad Adnan, Dr Mohd Raed Jamiruddin, Dr Firoze Ahmed and Dr Muhibullah

Khandaker developed the kits. According to the organisation, Prof Bijon has vast experience of inventing another test-kit to detect SARS virus. During the SARS outbreak back in 2003, he was in Singapore and fought the disease successfully. Two years earlier, he joined the university and has since been working on preventing dengue.

Major General Md Mahbubur Rahman, director general and licensing authority of the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA), said that they have to test the kit with a third party laboratory like as International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). “Also considering the serious public health concern, we will inspect the lab, where the kit would be developed,” he added.

Four new Covid-19 cases — one female and three male — have been confirmed in Bangladesh, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 18.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) disclosed the matter yesterday. Of the total patients, three were earlier released upon recovery while one died on Wednesday.

As of now, over 9,000 people have died across the world from the virus, which first broke out in China’s Wuhan last December.

Around 220,000 have been infected by Covid-19, a new strain of coronavirus, while 85,749 people have recovered from it.