Rapid Antigen Test is not accurate enough - Dr Fong

Permanent Secretary for Health Doctor James Fong says the Rapid Antigen Test is not accurate enough for the purpose of containing people and cleaning the place from COVID-19.

Doctor Fong highlighted this when questioned if the Rapid Antigen Test which was approved by the WHO and the Food and Drug Administration in the US, has been endorsed by the Ministry of Health and if Fiji will use this as it can further boost testing and results can come out in 15 minutes.

He says it is not as easy to interpret these COVID-19 tests as it is to do.

Doctor Fong clarifies that the interpretation is quite tricky if you are working in a country which has a low prevalence of a disease.

He says the problem is interpreting the test when it turns positive because they can have a high level of false positives.

Doctor Fong says they are also aware that if they use the rapid test, it should be used in a bubble and not test the general public.

He says when you strive for elimination those rapid test do not function properly.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also states that similar to other antigen tests, a small percentage of positive and negative results from this test may be false.

It says therefore for patients without symptoms, positive results should be treated as presumptively positive until confirmed by another test as soon as possible.

The FDA says this is especially true if there are fewer infections in a particular community, as false positive results can be more common when antigen tests are used in populations where there is little COVID-19.

It had issued an emergency use authorization for the first over-the-counter fully at-home diagnostic test for COVID-19.

The Ellume COVID-19 Home Test is a rapid, lateral flow antigen test, a type of test that runs a liquid sample along a surface with reactive molecules.

The test detects fragments of proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from a nasal swab sample from any individual 2 years of age or older.

The FDA had said by authorizing a test for over-the-counter use, the FDA allows it to be sold in places like drug stores, where a patient can buy it, swab their nose, run the test and find out their results in as little as 20 minutes.