<span style="color: #222222;">In Maharashtra, a new technology has been developed by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute-NEERI of Nagpur for COVID testing.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">AIR correspondent reports, the Saline Gargle RT-PCR technique for testing of COVID samples is developed by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute of Nagpur which comes under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – CSIR.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">This technique has also been approved by the ICMR.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Scientist in the Department of Environmental Virology Research of NEERI,Dr. Krishna Khairnar, told AIR that this technique can give results within three hours.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The term Saline gargle is itself self-explanatory it means that that you have to do gargling using saline solution.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">So we have specially designed a system where the saline gargling actually traps the COVID-19 virus.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Self-sampling is possible.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">It doesn't required any skilled person or any Health Care worker for collecting the sample.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab collection requires a skilled person and also it gives some kind of pain also discomfort to the person, because it is an invasive technique.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">But saline gargle is an very safe non-invasive technique and also it is very user-friendly.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">This Saline Gargle RT-PCR technique is expected to be time saving and used extensively for testing COVID samples in limited resources.</span><br />''  <br />