Is the new crown antigen test useful?

Applicable people for antigen testing:

First, people who go to primary medical and health institutions for treatment, have respiratory symptoms, fever and other symptoms and have symptoms within 5 days;

The second is isolation observation personnel, including home isolation observation, close contact and sub-close contact, entry isolation observation, closed and controlled areas and personnel in control areas;

The third is community residents who need antigen self-testing.

At the same time, the main conditions that need to be met for antigen testing for three groups of people and the channels for obtaining testing reagents have been clarified, and the disposal management process after positive testing has been formulated to promote the connection between antigen testing and nucleic acid testing.

The principles of new crown nucleic acid detection and antigen detection are different. Nucleic acid detection requires high-precision technology, and the whole process is very complicated and cannot be done at home. But antigen testing is easy, just as women can use pregnancy test strips at home.

As a supplementary method, antigen detection can be used for population screening. It is very convenient to use and can be tested at any time, with fast reporting and results within 30 minutes. Those who have nucleic acid detection capabilities should prefer nucleic acid detection; those who do not have nucleic acid detection capabilities can conduct antigen detection. Isolation observers and community residents should carefully read the instructions and standardize operations for antigen testing.

Antigen test to screen out infected people with high viral load

Is there any error in self-testing at home? Hu Bijie said that due to differences in detection principles, antigen detection may not be detected when an individual is just infected; but nucleic acid detection can be detected with a high probability. In general, the positive detection rate (sensitivity rate) of antigen testing is significantly lower than that of nucleic acid testing during the incubation period and early stage of onset.

Past data shows that in many cases the sensitivity rate is only more than 70%, and in the asymptomatic stage in the early stage of the disease, even only 30%. People with negative antigen tests cannot prove that they are not infected; people with positive antigen tests generally represent infection. Under normal circumstances, only if the test is negative for many consecutive days, it means that there is no infection.

Antigen testing as a necessary supplement is certainly beneficial. Antigen testing is meaningful for screening highly contagious COVID-19 patients with high viral loads. If you need to buy a rapid test kit for the new crown antigen, you can contact us.