India’s Mylab aims to make 10 crore units of at-home covid test kits per week

Mylab Discovery Solutions has the capacity to ramp up production of its at-home COVID-19 test kits to 100 million units per week over the next few months based on demand, the Indian diagnostics company told Reuters.

Mylab Chief Executive Officer Rahul Patil told Reuters that the company had received interest from government agencies and companies for its test kits. "Any individual without any technical expertise can perform the test. And our objective is to make sure it reaches villages as well," Patil said.

Although at-home tests are widely used outside of India, the authorisation of Mylab's kit earlier this week marked the first such approval in the country, which is in the grip of a fierce second wave of the pandemic that is starting to take a huge toll on its vast rural population.

The company, backed by Adar Poonawalla, CEO of vaccine maker Serum Institute of India, plans to start shipping the product within a few days, with the aim of producing 7 million kits next week. The company can raise the weekly production to 10 million in the next two weeks and has the capacity to hit the 100 million mark, depending on demand over the following four to six weeks, Patil said.

Mylab recently received the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) approval for the country’s first self-use rapid antigen test for covid-19, CoviSelf. The test can be purchased for ₹250 without a prescription from local pharmacies and online channel partners, the Pune-based company said in a statement.

The ICMR recently gave a green signal to a home-based rapid antigen testing (RAT) kit for COVID-19. The ICMR has made it clear that only symptomatic individuals and immediate contacts of people who tested positive in the laboratory should use the home test kit.

"Home testing by RAT is advised only in symptomatic individuals and immediate contacts of laboratory-confirmed positive cases. Indiscriminate testing is not advised," the county's apex health research body said.

(With inputs from Reuters)