The Indian Council of Medical Research on Wednesday issued an advisory for Covid-19 testing at home, where an individual will be able to test himself or herself without the presence of any medical professional. 

Giving out detailed guidelines on how to conduct this test, the ICMR said that it has approved one kit called CoviSelf for the purpose of home testing, in which only nasal swabs will be required for this rapid antigen testing.

Only symptomatic individuals and immediate contacts of people who tested positive in the laboratory should use the home test. Indiscriminate testing is not advised, the medical body said in its advisory.

All individuals who test positive may be considered as true positives and no repeat testing is required.All symptomatic individuals who test negative by RAT should get themselves immediately tested by RT-PCR, it added.

Created by the Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd,  the CoviSelfTM (PathoCatch) Covid-19 OTC Antigen LF device is a home test which 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 top medical body said that 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, it 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 and patients’ confidentiality be fully maintained, assured the ICMR.

The aim of the home test kits is to take some of the pressure off laboratories. Over the last 24 hours, 20,08,296 samples have been tested in a new record. In India, the number indicates that testing is not continuing at full capacity.

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The country has a capacity of conducting 33 lakh tests a day, but the daily average is 18 lakh — up from 10 lakh on April 1. This means 45 per cent of the country’s testing capacity is lying unused. The average daily test figure is up by only 75 per cent from April 1 – a minuscule figure when the rate infection is taken into consideration.

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