Public-Private Initiative to Increase COVID-19 Testing Capacity by Using Promega Maxwell Instrument in India

This blog is written by guest blogger, Dr Rajnish Bharti, General Manager of Promega Biotech India Pvt Ltd.

As COVID-19 cases accelerate, the country of India has decided to scale up testing capacity to 100,000 tests per day in the coming days.

In a major step to counter the coronavirus crisis, Promega India is supporting government agencies through our automated instruments. The Maxwell® RSC instrument is a compact, automated RNA extraction platform that processes up to 48 samples simultaneously in less than 35 minutes. The automated Promega solution allows laboratories to process up to 400 samples in a typical 8-hour shift.

Scientists in India train on the Maxwell RSC 48
Forensic Science Laboratory-Jaipur and SMS Hospital Jaipur join hands together to use Promega Maxwell® RSC 48 to Increase COVID-19 Testing capacity.
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A Potential Single-Tube Multiplex Assay for Detecting Dengue Virus in the Field

In areas of the world where the electricity is intermittent, resources are limited and transporting bulky equipment and reagents that are sensitive to temperature fluctuations is difficult, diagnosis of viruses like dengue can be challenging. If you could reduce or eliminate the need for electricity dependent equipment for diagnostic assays without sacrificing sensitivity or specificity, it would be a boon to field workers. An article published in PLOS ONE describes how researchers developed a multiplex isothermal amplification method that could assess a potential dengue infection with a visual real-time or endpoint detection in a single tube.

Countries affected by dengue. By Percherie (Distribution de la dengue sur Commons) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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