Medical devices company Trivitron Healthcare has developed and commercialised a wide range of diagnostic products for effective diagnosis of new variants of SARS-CoV-2. Trivitron’s R&D conducted an in-silico analysis of mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, ensuring Trivitron’s COVID-19 testing kits can effectively detect the mutated strain variants, Omicron BF.7 and XBB.

“The new strain of Omicron contains mutations in its Spike (S) protein. The in-silico analysis suggests that none of the mutations associated with these variants impact Trivitron COVID-19 test kits against the detection. They do not rely on the spike gene-based detection,” said Dr Suresh Thakur, President – Scientific Affairs, Trivitron Healthcare.

Trivitron’s COVIDSure, COVIDSure PRO and COVIDsure Direct RT-PCR Kits detect the conserved region of SARS-CoV-2 and ORF1ab, Envelope E-gene, and Nucleocapsid N-gene. Mutation in the S gene associated with Omicron and other variants remains unaffected by this multiplex RT-PCR test. These kits can detect SARS-COV-2 variants, including Omicron BF.7 and XBB variants.

Trivitron BIOCARD Pro COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Kit is an immunochromatography-based test that offers qualitative detection of specific antigens to COVID-19 present in the human nasopharyngeal swab. This antigen test kit detects the conserved region of the N gene of SARS-CoV-2 that remains unaffected by the mutation in the S gene, hence can detect the Omicron variants BF.7 and XBB of COVID-19.