Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale has been leading her team on the quest to create India’s first covid-19 testing kit in, surprisingly, the last stage of her pregnancy. Catch the full story on this amazing women right below!

Virologist finishes coronavirus testing kit day before delivering her baby!

With the fast-spreading pace of coronavirus, many scientist teams have been on the race to develop a useful virus testing kit for their country and globally. Now, let us bring you to the story of Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale from India. Up until now, she has been working with her team to work on India’s first covid-19 testing kit. Surprisingly, she managed to deliver the package in a record time of six weeks. 

Notably, she did it while entering the last stage of her pregnancy. One ay before submitting the kit for evaluation, she has given birth to a baby girl. Speaking through a phone interview, Bhosale shared her thoughts on the journey: “It was like giving birth to two babies. There were complications in the pregnancy while work on the test kit was on. The baby was delivered through cesarean”.

It wasn’t an easy task for her, but Bhosale claimed that she felt that it was the right time to serve the people to aid the combat against the coronavirus threat. “I had been working for five years in this field; and if I don’t work in emergency situations when my services are needed the most, then what is the use?”. While she couldn’t visit the office due to her pregnancy, she has guided her 10-people team to work on the project at Mylab Discovery in Pune. She cited her team bond and support for success. 

What’s next?

Bhosale’s team newly developed kits reportedly help reduce the time of testing to only 2.5 hours; quite an upgrade from the standard of eight hours now. Furthermore, it should cost around s 1,200, a quarter of Rs 4,500 per kit provided by the government. Shrikant Patole hours- the company’s co-founder – stated that the equipment would need to go through a lot of quality checks