What will change with antigen tests and how they work
A circular from the Ministry of Health should equate molecular swabs with antigen tests. News and indiscretions
Rapid antigenic test as a molecular swab. In a nutshell, this is what a circular from the Ministry of Health should say, which should arrive in the next few days.
What does it mean? The rapid tests will be enough to provide a definitive diagnosis of coronavirus infection and therefore will also be counted in the daily number of swabs carried out in Italy.
THE CHANGES FORESEEN BY THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH
The Ministry of Health is ready to introduce major changes in the testing strategy. On Roberto Speranza's table, Repubblica reports, a circular is ready in which the antigenic rapid swabs will be equated with molecular swabs.
QUICK SWABS FOR DEFINITIVE DIAGNOSIS
What does it mean? In simple words, rapid swabs will be among those that can be directly validated, without the need for an additional molecular swab, for the diagnosis of Covid-19 . The antigen test will also be sufficient to declare recovery from the disease.
To justify the choice also the ECDC, the European center for disease control which changed the definition of the case of infection and included the antigenic one among the types of examination.
SHORTENED TIMES
Not having to do the molecular swab after the positivity revealed by the quick antigenic swab will reduce the waiting on the part of the citizen and free up test kits that can be used for other people.
CHANGE THE COUNT
Changing the testing strategy will also lead to a change in calculations. With the arrival of the new circular, the rapid tests will in the meantime enter the daily count of the Civil Protection, which until now has reported and monitored only the number of molecular ones (down, among other things, in the last period precisely due to a greater diffusion of rapid tampons).
FALSE PERCENTAGES
Failure to count rapid swabs, which was often requested by the Regions, distorted the percentage of positives with respect to the number of tests performed. That percentage, in fact, would be much lower if we count all the swabs made during the day.
MOLECULAR SWAB AND ANTIGENIC TEST: THE DIFFERENCES
But let's go to the differences between the two tests. Both swabs are nasopharyngeal type, but if the molecular one searches for fragments of the genetic material of which the virus is composed, the antigenic one searches for the presence of viral proteins capable of binding to antibodies.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/che-cosa-cambiera-con-i-test-antigenici-e-come-funzionano/ on Fri, 18 Dec 2020 06:46:57 +0000.