Govt introduces 'game-changer' antigen testing

Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh announced on Monday that the Government in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) have purchased 160,000 rapid test antigen test kits as it decentralises its testing strategy.

At the Ministry of Health’s covid19 virtual press conference, Deyalsingh said the Government was working with PAHO over the past two weeks to get the tests.

He said PAHO approached the minister and Ministry of Health two weeks ago to sign on to new technology that gave the capacity to do antigen testing that has an all-round accuracy of 95 per cent.

“This is going to be a game-changer. We ordered and I signed off on it on Friday. I had a deadline of August 31 which is today. We did our needs analysis and sourced the funding and we signed off on it on Friday,” he said.

Initially, when the discussion of antigen testing was raised about two to three months ago, Deyalsingh said, at the time, the antigen testing that was available was not very accurate.

“It had between a 25 to 50 per cent false negative failure rate,” he said.

He added it was felt those figures were not good enough.

The new rapid antigen test kits cost US$6 for one and will be an investment of US$960,000 for TT.

“This test kit is in the form of a cassette similar to what a pregnancy test looks like now. It will be deployed once it reaches TT at the primary level and the emergency departments. This is going to be a total game-changer as we continue and deepen our policy of decentralisation of testing.”

Reading a letter from PAHO, Deyalsingh said, “The test identifies who are currently infected with coronavirus. It may be used as a quick test to detect active infections. Initially, it will not be used to diagnose disease but will be used to screen people or identify those who need a more definitive test.”

He said antigen tests could identify the virus in nose and throat secretions by looking for proteins from the virus as opposed to the diagnostic test which looks for genetic material.

He added that TT’s order through PAHO goes into the production line and the ministry will be working with PAHO to get the tests into TT in the shortest possible time.

The US Food and Drug Administration website says an antigen test “usually provides results diagnosing an active coronavirus infection faster than molecular tests, but antigen tests have a higher chance of missing an active infection.

“If an antigen test shows a negative result indicating that you do not have an active coronavirus infection, your healthcare provider may order a molecular test to confirm the result.”