by While at-home COVID testing kits have reduced the stress on diagnostic labs and healthcare providers, health officials have a new concern to tackle.
Reports suggest that many positive cases are going unreported due to an increased use of home testing kits.
Ideally, a person using a self-test kit has to log into the app of the concerned brand with the help of their mobile number, following which they are to scan the unique QR code available on the testing kit. Once the test is conducted, the users have to then take a picture of the test through the app, which will automatically submit the results.
However, given that there is no compulsion to upload the results, many are skipping this step, which is leading to many unreported positive cases.
Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) tells a new agency, “There is no data entry from home testing kits. It is a screening test, not a confirmatory test. We don’t know about those who are using self-testing kits. If those testing positive don’t follow isolation rules, they will end up infecting their close contacts.”
