Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved a home-based Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kit to be manufactured by Pune based Mylab Discovery Solutions. This testing kit is advised for individuals having symptoms and contacts of laboratory confirmed positive cases.

Symptomatic individuals who are negative by rapid antigen test should get themselves tested by RT-PCR as RAT could miss few positive cases with low viral load. Rapid antigen test is less sensitive than RT-PCR test, however accuracy of the test increases with an increase in viral load.

“Individuals have to download the home testing mobile application available on Google play store and Apple store. 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,” says ICMR. The test has to be done strictly as per the user manual provided by the manufacturer and sternly follow the guidelines for disposal of kits.

A positive test will take 5-7 minutes and a negative result will take maximum of 15 minutes. Any result taking more than 20 minutes to appear is considered invalid. The kit will be available for Rs. 250 and it will be there in the market soon.