BMC decides to buy ‘cheaper & faster’ antigen Covid test kits

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has decided to buy a large number of antigen test kits for the city. These kits are much cheaper than the RT-PCR test kits and the results are available within 30 minutes. BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal told ET that the first lot of the antigen test kits would be available in around a week’s time.

The ICMR has recommended antigen-based tests for diagnosis of Covid-19. The guidelines by the ICMR says that most of such tests have relatively moderate sensitivity but high specificity.

A positive test should be considered as a true positive whereas all symptomatic individuals testing negative through the rapid antigen test should be confirmed with a real-time PCR test.


“We have around 21,000 suspected Covid patients in a government quarantine. With these tests, we can quickly identify those who are infected among these suspects and the rest can be discharged. We will free up more beds otherwise occupied by the suspected cases. A faster result also means that we get the opportunity to quickly identify close contacts of a positive case,” said Chahal to ET. The commissioner said that the test kits were being procured from a firm in Manesar (Haryana).

The move to procure these kits came in the backdrop of criticism that the civic body was not testing enough, which he said was unwarranted.

“I am surprised that people are criticising us on testing, we are actually testing more than other states and, once these kits arrive, we would put others to shame. We are actually testing the right people, which is borne out by the rapid decrease in the number of cases,” said the commissioner.

Chahal pointed out that the BMC’s testing strategy has been successful as the average increase in cases has been steadily coming down.