India’s Mylab Discovery announces capacity to raise COVID-19 test production to 100 million units per week

Indian biotechnology and diagnostics products company Mylab Discovery Solutions (Mylab) stated on 21 May 2021 that it 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, Reuters news agency reported on Monday.

Reportedly, the authorisation of Mylab’s kit earlier this week in India marked the first such approval in the country.

Mylab Chief Executive Officer, Rahul Patil told Reuters, that 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.

The company plans to start shipping the product within a few days, with the aim of producing seven million kits next week.

Reportedly, Mylab had received interest from government agencies and companies for its test kits. This test does not need any technical expertise to perform the test.

Mylab’s antigen test, ‘CoviSelf’, is different from molecular PCR tests, which need a laboratory to compute results and are considered to be more accurate.

According to Reuters, antigen tests are known to produce more false-negatives, so people with COVID-19 symptoms that had negative results might need to get re-tested with a molecular test.