Tthe Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) gave approval to the self-use Rapid Antigen Test for testing COVID-19 on Wednesday and is being developed by a molecular diagnostics company.

The indigenously developed test is named CoviSelf (PathoCatch), and is designed for home testing. It is advisable for symptomatic individuals only and for people coming in contact with lab-tested COVID positive patients. The advisory is issued by ICMR for COVID-19 home testing by using the RAT kit.

The list of advisories has noted that people who test positive should be considered as true positives and all symptomatic patients who test negative must be tested by RTPCR as RATs can likely miss few positive cases with a low viral load.

All the users are instructed to click a picture of the test strip after finishing the test procedure with the same mobile phone used for downloading the mobile app and user registration.

The data present in the mobile app gets centrally captured with a secure server that is connected with the ICMR’s COVID-19 testing portal and all the captured data will be stored.

The Pune- based company said that the mid-nasal swab test will give test results in 15 minutes. As per the manufacturer, the self-use rapid test will help in faster testing and diagnosis of Covid suspects. It will also play an important role in reducing the spread of the infection as people who are tested positive can immediately take the isolation and treatment measures.

Mylabs managing director Hasmukh Rawal on the approval, said that it is the biggest crisis India has ever faced. They have tried to develop solutions with social benefit at the core. With CoviSelf, they are sharing the power of testing early with the residents and can save thousands of lives. For India, millions of kits will be made available for a fraction of the cost of kits that are available in the US.

Mylab’s Clinical Director Gautam Wankhede explained that any person above 2 years of age can be tested through CoviSelf but ideally the test should be conducted by people above 18 years of age. Most of the western countries have allowed to self-test their citizens and is considered as a powerful tool to break the transmission chain. The test gets combine to Mylab’s AI-powered mobile app and the user can know his or her positive status. It can also submit the result to ICMR directly for tracing, and also know the next step in either case of the result.

The biggest challenge faced is the extent of testing for the size of India and by allowing people to do their own tests can handle the volume issue. They are sure that this small step will be a big leap in vindicating the second wave.

The kit will consist of all testing materials, a visual instructions leaflet, a QR code link to watch the video along with a biohazard bag to dispose of things safely after testing.

Source: ET Healthworld