Corona symptomatic patients' ALERT! Now, you can test yourself for Covid 19 from home – check what ICMR has to say

Now, a symptomatic patient can do his/her covid test at home, as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday has approved a home-based rapid antigen test (RAT) kit for Covid-19. This kit has been manufactured by a Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions Limited. 

Issuing a caution against indiscriminate use of this home-based kit, ICMR advised citizen that it must be used only on symptomatic persons and on immediate contacts of laboratory-confirmed positive cases, it said in an advisory statement. 

While validating and approving the kit, the country’s apex health research body said that only nasal swabs will be required for this rapid antigen testing and the process should be conducted as per the user manual provided by the manufacturer with the kit. 

The advisory stated that all individuals who test positive through the home-based RAT kit may be considered as true positives and no-repeat testing is required. 

On the contrary, it said, "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.” 

In its advisory, the ICMR also made mandatory the users of this RAT kit to download the home testing mobile app from either Google play store or Apple store, as the mobile app is one of the important guidelines laid out in the user manual and this application will provide a positive or negative test result to the patient. 

Similarly, all users are advised to click a picture of the test strip after completing the test procedure with the same mobile phone which has been used for downloading the mobile app and user registration. 

"Data in the app of your mobile 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. Patient confidentiality will be fully maintained," the advisory underlined. 

The ICMR added that CoviSelfTM(PathoCatch) COVID-19 OTC Antigen LF device currently manufactured by Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd., Pune (Maharashtra), India has been validated and approved.