The COVID-19 pandemic has spread to almost all countries around the world, with the number of cases increasing by a bigger margin. Currently, the total number of cases in India has gone up to 753, with 20 deaths reported as per Worldometer. In these testing times, many IITs across India are working on different ways to tackle the virus from developing sanitisers to finding a cure.

A team of researchers at IIT Guwahati, led by Professor Sachin Kumar, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, are working towards developing a vaccine, along with developing rapid detection and portable diagnostic kits for different types of viruses and microorganisms.

The team consists of PhD students, MTech students, Junior Research Fellows and Post Doctoral Fellows. Recently, the team had developed a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis and classical swine fever virus, and their research was published in the journals Vaccine and Archives of Virology, respectively. The researchers are trying to learn if they can use the same tool that they had developed for the encephalitis so that it could be used for COVID-19 as well.

And its not just the vaccine that they are working on, but they are also working to develop the first line of protection.

The institute, like many others, has already created hand sanitisers as prescribed by the WHO. These sanitisers are distributed to everyone on the campus, including visitors.

India still has long way to go when it comes to fighting the pandemic, but the consistent research efforts by the many institutions give hope to the cause.

(Edited by Kanishk Singh)

Do you have an interesting story to share? Please write to us at tci@yourstory.com. To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

How has the coronavirus outbreak disrupted your life? And how are you dealing with it? Write to us or send us a video with subject line 'Coronavirus Disruption' to editorial@yourstory.com

Here is the original post:
Heres what researchers at IIT Guwahati are doing to tackle the COVID-19 problem - YourStory