The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday approved the self-use Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kit for COVID-19, which has been named ‘CoviSelf’. This RAT kit, developed by Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions will be available at just Rs. 250 per pack. CoviSelf, India’s first COVID-19 home-test kit is likely to hit the markets in a week.
This self-use home test kit can be used by any symptomatic person, or immediate contacts of the confirmed cases without the need for sample collection by a healthcare professional. With the help of CoviSelf, anyone can be tested at home, and if the results come out to be positive, the person can go into isolation and can get treated as soon as possible.
Apart from this, ICMR has made it clear that those who test positive using the kit, should consider themselves as true positives and therefore no repeat testing is required for those individuals. However, negative symptomatic individuals will be treated as a suspect of COVID-19 and are advised to follow the ICMR or Health ministry home isolation protocol while they wait for the RTPCR test result.
Sujit Jain, the Director at Mylab Discovery Solutions also said that these home tests are combined with Mylab’s AI-powered mobile app so that a user can know his/her positive status, submit the result to ICMR directly for traceability, and know what to do next in either case of result.
Also, the test kits can be purchased without a prescription from local pharmacies and online channel partners. The kit is being made available in order to ease the pressure on already overburdened testing labs and to reduce delays in test results, which is more than 72 hours in some parts of the country.