Pakistan to start commercial manufacturing of COVID-19 diagnostic kits : Fawad.

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan has developed indigenous COVID-19 diagnostic kits that have been approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for commercial use and is likely to bring down the cost of coronavirus tests in the country, said Fawad Chaudhry Federal Minister for Science and Technology.

'We were mostly importing COVID-19 test kits from China. Now our scientists have developed our own Polymerase Chain Reaction equipment,' he said in an interview with Arab News.

Chaudhry informed that the kit was developed by experts at the National University of Science and Technology with more than 90 percent accuracy which was about 20 percent better than the imported tests.

'It is a totally domestic kit and will help us reduce our import bill,' he added. 'Likewise, it will bring down the cost of COVID-19 tests to one third of what it is.'

The minister also sounded hopeful about developing domestic ventilators within the next few weeks since clinical trials of four machines have already entered their final phase.

'Once these trials are over, we will ask commercial entities to start manufacturing these ventilators. In most of the countries, including the United States, motor companies are manufacturing ventilators. Therefore, we are also bringing motor companies into it. I hope we will be able to produce more than 100 ventilators in the first three months,' he said.

Chaudhry informed that the...