The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday approved a home-based rapid antigen testing (RAT) kit for COVID-19. The name of the kit is CoviSelfTM(PathoCatch) COVID-19 OTC Antigen LF device. ICMR said that this kit should be used only on symptomatic individuals or on immediate contacts of laboratory-confirmed positive cases.
“Home testing by RAT is advised only in symptomatic individuals and immediate contacts of laboratory confirmed positive cases. Indiscriminate testing is not advised,” the county’s apex health research body said.
The home-based rapid antigen testing kit has been manufactured by Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd, Pune, has been validated and approved by the ICMR.
“All symptomatic individuals who test negative by RAT should get themselves immediately tested by RT-PCR. This is especially important as the RATs are likely to miss few positive cases presenting with a low viral load. All RAT negative symptomatic individuals may be treated as suspect COVID-19 cases and are advised to follow the ICMR/Ministry of Health home isolation protocol while awaiting the RT-PCR test result,” the advisory stated.
Only nasal swab will be required for this rapid antigen testing. The kit comes with a pre-filled extraction tube, a sterile nasal swab, one test card, and a biohazard bag. The person undertaking the test will have to download the Mylab coviself app on their mobile phone. The home testing mobile app is available in Google play store and Apple store and must be downloaded by all users. A positive test will take about 5 to 7 minutes, and a negative result will take 15 minutes maximum.
There will be two sections on the test card—the control section and the test section. If the bar shows up only at the control section ‘C’, the result is negative, and if the bar appears on both the control section and test (T) section, the test is positive.
The test kit will be available in the market in about a week’s time and will be priced at ₹250 per kit.
