COVISELF KIT (COVID-19 Self test kit)

A home Covid-19 testing kit will be available in India, for the first time ever.. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) allowed the use of CoviSelf, the home testing kit manufactured by Mylab Discovery Solutions. The Pune-based molecular diagnostic firm was also the first to launch RT-PCR tests locally, a year
ago.

The kit detects protein antigen from SARS-CoV-2 in nasal swab samples from individuals with or without symptoms of Covid-19, and will be available at the retail chemists across India.

“For the last three months, our team of 25 scientists was working on the making of this product. It was very clear that sooner or later, we will need home testing kits for Covid-19 for early detection,” said Dr Gautam Wankhede, director of medical affairs at Mylab, who led the development of CoviSelf.

The kits will be available in the market, most likely, from the early next week,” Dr Wankhede told ThePrint.

The company’s current production capacity is 70 lakh tests per week and this is expected to expand to upto 1 crore tests per week in the next two weeks.

This home testing kit is expected to ease the pressure on overburdened test labs and also reduce the gap in testing and results, which is more than 72 hours in some parts of the country. Samples don’t have to be collected by a healthcare professional for CoviSelf.