New Delhi: CoviSelf, the first self-testing home kit for Covid testing, will be available in the market by the end of next week, the director of Pune's MyLab Discovery Solutions, Sujjet Jain, told news agency ANI. This is the first home kit to have got the approval of the Indian Council of Medical Research for home testing in the country. The manufacturer aims at reaching 90 percent of the pin codes in India, while the kit will also be available for online purchase. "It will be available by end of next week in more than 7 lakh pharmacies & our online pharmacy partners across India," Jain said. The kit is priced at ₹250, including taxes, and will come with a detailed manual on how to conduct the test at home, without the help of any medical practitioner. Since it is a Rapid Antigen Test, it will only require a nasal swab. While the do-it-yourself test will take two minutes, the result will come within 15 minutes. A positive result, however, may come sooner than that. Any result coming after 20 minutes will be considered invalid, the manufacturer's video manual said.

The concept of self-testing is not new as several countries have already allowed such kits for home use for early detection. As India has been battling with the second wave of the pandemic since March-April, the testing facilities have also become overburdened resulting in a longer wait for results. While the ICMR has already notified that people with Covid symptoms can be considered as Covid suspects and be subjected to treatment without waiting for the results, this home testing kit will help in quick detections. Apprehending indiscriminate use, the ICMR has made it clear that not everyone should opt for this test. Only those with symptoms and those who have come in contact with positive cases are advised to take this home testing. Mylab's current production capacity is 70 lakh tests per week and, within 14 days, the firm plans to increase the capacity to one crore test kits per week.