India’s first Covid home test kit to cost ₹250
NEW DELHI: The country’s first home-based Coronavirus (Covid-19) testing kit, Coviself, was launched on Thursday, a day after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) gave its approval for use.
The product, created by Punebased Mylab Discovery solutions, will cost ₹250 per kit and will be available in chemist shops from next week. Mylab also developed the first indigenous reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test kit last year.
Currently, the company is producing seven million tests per week, and is aiming to scale it up to about 10 million tests per week in the next 14 days, it said in a statement. ICMR, on the other hand, is working towards scaling up its daily Covid testing capacity to 4.5 million per day by June-end, from the existing two million tests per day, its director general Dr Balram Bhargava announced on Thursday.
“On May 18 and 19, we conducted more than two million tests in a day, which is the highest in the world. Around midfebruary and early March, we were conducting about 8-10 lakh tests a day and that was increased to 20 lakh (2 million) tests a day, which is about a twoand-a-half time increase, yet our positivity percentage has fallen from 23% to 13%. So, testing has to be increased; you have to get positivity rate down to 5% or below. Therefore, from 20 lakh tests, our target is to do 25 lakh tests by the end of this month, and 45 lakh by end of June,” Dr Bhargava told a media briefing.
India’s current weekly positivity rate — from May 13 to 19 — is 15%. “Things are slightly improving but we are in the midst of a pandemic, and we have to maintain a strict vigil. All those districts that have a positivity rate of 10% or more will have to have serious containment measures in place to break the transmission chain. Testing is one of the pillars that will help contain this,” he said. “Even though all labs are trying their best to work round the clock despite infection among laboratory staff, it is advised to make aggressive use of rapid antigen tests wherever positivity is high so that infected individuals are identified early and are rapidly isolated.”