Soon after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) issued guidelines for home testing for coronavirus, a Pune Lab has confirmed that self-testing kits will soon be available in the market.
To be sold under the market name CoviSelf, director of Pune’s MyLab Discovery Solutions, Sujjet Jain told reporters on Thursday that the kits have received approval from the ICMR and will be available in market by next week.
Currently priced at Rs 250, the kit comes with a detailed manual to help you test yourself without any help from medical practitioners. The test will take two minutes, and the result will come within 15 minutes. Any result coming after 20 minutes will be considered invalid, the manufacturer’s has said in a statement.
The ICMR had earlier said that patients with a positive result should not opt for a repeat test and will be considered as positive. It also asked people to use the same phone to clicke picture of the test result as well as register for self-testing. It added that all those testing negative must go for RTPCR and stay in isolation until the second reports arrive.
The ICMR had earlier said in a notification that covid treatment must be started for people with symptoms, without waiting for the results.
As per ICMR, A total of 32,23,56,187 samples were tested up to 19 May 2021 and 20,55,010 were tested on May 19 alone.