Government of India should approve paper-strip rapid antigen tests for self-testing
Government of India should approve paper-strip rapid antigen tests for self-testing
The Issue
Three reasons why YOU should help convince the regulatory authorities in India to approve paper-strip rapid antigen tests for self-administration:
1) Having these low-cost (50 - 100 INR), fast (results in 15-20 minutes) tests available to the general public would massively increase testing capacity across the country, making it far easier to identify and isolate COVID-19 cases.
2) With the second wave of the pandemic overwhelming our healthcare infrastructure and vaccination unable to stem the tide in the short-term, testing everyone weekly for COVID-19 is India's best chance at flattening the curve and preventing countless deaths due to unavailable medical care. When this was implemented in Slovakia in November 2020, new cases dropped by 70%.
3) Local governments and corporations will be able to employ large-scale testing initiatives, reducing the need for lockdowns.
The existing testing capacity in India is insufficient to deal with the massive demand that exists due to the second wave of COVID-19. Government labs and private testing centers are overwhelmed and tests are now taking days to process. Because of this, only symptomatic people are eligible for testing, which means that asymptomatic carriers are undetected and will infect many others, leading to community-wide COVID clusters.
We propose that the Indian government approve the use of self-administered rapid antigen tests — which are similar in mechanism and use to paper-strip pregnancy tests — by the general public without the help of a medical professional at home, at work, and in public gathering places such as shops and restaurants. These tests are fast (15-30 minutes to get a result), easy to use, and new evidence suggests that they are very accurate (80%+ sensitivity) at detecting the presence of COVID-19 in people who are actively spreading the virus (which corresponds to detectability by RT-PCR with a cycle threshold — CT value — of 30 or less).
In addition, we recommend that the Government of India deploy these tests in major metropolitan areas such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad, as well as emerging hotspots across rural India, to test every individual in those areas at least once per week. Recent evidence from Slovakia (written up in Science), Liverpool, and Nova Scotia suggests that this strategy could help reduce the incidence of new infections by as much as 70% after just a few weeks of implementation, saving potentially hundreds of thousands of lives.
Please go to https://testeveryone.in/ for more information.
The Issue
Three reasons why YOU should help convince the regulatory authorities in India to approve paper-strip rapid antigen tests for self-administration:
1) Having these low-cost (50 - 100 INR), fast (results in 15-20 minutes) tests available to the general public would massively increase testing capacity across the country, making it far easier to identify and isolate COVID-19 cases.
2) With the second wave of the pandemic overwhelming our healthcare infrastructure and vaccination unable to stem the tide in the short-term, testing everyone weekly for COVID-19 is India's best chance at flattening the curve and preventing countless deaths due to unavailable medical care. When this was implemented in Slovakia in November 2020, new cases dropped by 70%.
3) Local governments and corporations will be able to employ large-scale testing initiatives, reducing the need for lockdowns.
The existing testing capacity in India is insufficient to deal with the massive demand that exists due to the second wave of COVID-19. Government labs and private testing centers are overwhelmed and tests are now taking days to process. Because of this, only symptomatic people are eligible for testing, which means that asymptomatic carriers are undetected and will infect many others, leading to community-wide COVID clusters.
We propose that the Indian government approve the use of self-administered rapid antigen tests — which are similar in mechanism and use to paper-strip pregnancy tests — by the general public without the help of a medical professional at home, at work, and in public gathering places such as shops and restaurants. These tests are fast (15-30 minutes to get a result), easy to use, and new evidence suggests that they are very accurate (80%+ sensitivity) at detecting the presence of COVID-19 in people who are actively spreading the virus (which corresponds to detectability by RT-PCR with a cycle threshold — CT value — of 30 or less).
In addition, we recommend that the Government of India deploy these tests in major metropolitan areas such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad, as well as emerging hotspots across rural India, to test every individual in those areas at least once per week. Recent evidence from Slovakia (written up in Science), Liverpool, and Nova Scotia suggests that this strategy could help reduce the incidence of new infections by as much as 70% after just a few weeks of implementation, saving potentially hundreds of thousands of lives.
Please go to https://testeveryone.in/ for more information.
The Decision Makers
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Petition created on 6 May 2021