KOCHI: Loss of smell is considered as one of the prime symptoms of Covid in patients. Now, an individual can easily screen themselves for Covid infection using Covi-Smell, a Covid Anosmia checker developed by a team of scientists from Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB).
Though the Covid-Anosmia Checker was developed last year by a team from RBCB, including Jackson James, Riya Ann Paul, Budhaditya Basu, Joby Isaac, Biju S Nair and Parvathy Surendran, the technology was transferred to Instigator e-supporting services private Ltd, a Thiruvananthapuram-based startup who has started its mass production. The smell testing kit is now available in the market and is priced at Rs 99 each.
“No special training is required to use this kit which consists of six strips each that can be used as a first-line screening to effectively detect Covid infection. Covi-Smell kit can be bought online through the startup’s website www.inster.in. A mobile application Inster developed for the purpose also helps in monitoring the loss of smell of the infected persons,” said Riya Ann Paul, a PhD scholar who is one among the persons behind the innovation.
The Covid-Anosmia checker consists of the gradients of coffee and lemongrass oil and the trials were done on both healthy and Covid-19 infected persons. “A trial screening to identify the Covid-19 infected persons was also carried out to check the sensitivity and specificity of the screening tool.
It was observed that the Covid positive people were hyposmic (partial loss of smell) instead of being anosmic (complete loss of smell) when subjected to higher odour concentration. Hence, the tool identified 97 per cent of symptomatic and 94 per cent of asymptomatic Covid positive persons,” shares Riya. The testing kit can be used for screening at airports or border entry points. The kit will be available in all districts very soon.