Coronavirus in Mumbai: What is an antigen test that the BMC has asked companies in containment zones to test their employees with?

With offices allowed to work with 10% of staff strength, the BMC on Friday has asked corporate companies and industries located in containment zones to do antigen tests for their employees.

According to a report by Mid-Day, the BMC has asked private hospitals and labs to get permissions to do the tests. Meantime, BMC will start testing its health workers, citizens aged above 70 years and residents of Containment Zones.

Earlier on Thursday, state Health Minister Rajesh Tope had said that the Maharashtra government would conduct antigen tests, which would provide results of the COVID-19 tests within an hour, unlike the current waiting period of over 24 hours.

Talking to reporters, Tope said that one lakh antigen test kits will soon be made available in the state. "Procurement orders have been given. Priority would be given to conduct this test on the frontline COVID-19 workers, such as essential services staff, health workers, police and others," he said.

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What is an antigen test?

The rapid antigen test allows faster diagnosis without laboratory examination of samples and results are available within 30 minutes.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as India is lifting lockdowns in various parts of the country in a phased manner, it is expected to see an upsurge in cases of COVID-19 due to increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In view of this, it is important to scale up testing capacity to the maximum possible levels, it said.

The ICMR in a statement had said that the gold standard RT-PCR diagnostic test for COVID-19 has limitations in terms of widespread availability. In view of this, there is an urgent requirement of reliable and convenient rapid point of care antigen detection assays with high sensitivity and specificity. “Such assays could be used as potential diagnostic tests in all possible public and private healthcare settings and made available for mass testing," the body said in its 'Invitation for Expression of Interest for Validation of Rapid Antigen Detection Assays for COVID-19' document.