Hummingbird News Desk
KOLKATA, 20 MAY: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved the country’s first self-testing kit for home use for suspected Covid-19 patients. This kit will reduce burden on existing laboratories, reduce stress on manpower required for home testing, and provide quick results.
Its efficacy, however, is not 100 per cent and has chances of false negatives even if a person has Covid-19.
The CoviSelfTM (PathoCatch) COVID-19 OTC Antigen LF device was created by the Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd. The home test should be conducted according to the process detailed in an app, which should be downloaded from the Google play store and Apple store, the ICMR said.
“The mobile app is a comprehensive guide of the testing procedure and will provide a positive or negative test result to the patient. All users are advised to click a picture of the test strip after completing the test procedure with the same mobile phone,” the ICMR said.
The data from the phone will be centrally captured in a secure server which is connected with the ICMR COVID-19 testing portal, where all data will be eventually stored.
The kit will cost Rs 250. Mylab’s current production capacity is 70 lakh kits per week, it plans to scale upto one crore kits per week in the next fortnight.
ICMR has advised this test for only those who have symptoms or are high risk contacts of positive patients and need to conduct a test at home. If positive, the person will be considered Covid-19 positive and will not require RT-PCR as a confirmatory test. This test is synced with a mobile app which will help directly feed data on ICMR portal for contact tracing. This test is not advised for general screening in public places of hawkers, show owners, or commuters.
If a person has symptoms and tests negative on this kit, he has to undergo RT-PCR test.
Tags: #CoviSelf #COVID19 .#ICMR #COVIDTestKit
