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Portugal has made a reservation of 7.5 million rapid diagnostic tests for covid-19, which should arrive at the beginning of next year, announced this Friday the Undersecretary of State for Health and Health, António Lacerda Sales, during the update conference of press on the situation of the pandemic covid-19 of the General Directorate of Health (DGS).
Lacerda Sales revealed that Portugal is performing, on average, more than 37 thousand diagnostic tests for covid-19 per day during this month of November. As for rapid antigen tests, around 30,000 have already been carried out and reported in the country, an average of 1,672 per day in the last week.
After the publication of these figures, the Secretary of State revealed that, in addition to the 500,000 rapid tests made available by the Portuguese Red Cross, “Portugal made a reserve of 7.5 million tests, through a European mechanism, which it should arrive early next year. “” This is a reserve that may or may not be activated, but it is important for our preparation and our future response, “he stressed.
António Lacerda Sales also pointed out that “the antigen tests used in our country have performance standards with sensitivity values greater than or equal to 90%”. But then why didn’t the Portuguese authorities start using these tests earlier? The answer is “simple”: “Science needs time. Two months ago, the available tests did not offer these guarantees ”.
An “amazing tool”, but “care” is needed in regulating it
The president of the Governing Board of the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA), Fernando Almeida, who participated this Friday in the DGS press conference, began, in turn, noting that rapid antigen tests “are an amazing and fundamental tool, especially so that we can have a greater capacity, not only to test with discretion, but also to be able to act more quickly and quickly interrupt the chain of virus transmission”.
Rapid tests allow you to respond “in a much shorter time” than PCR tests – which, however, we cannot “by no means” do without. “With this rapid test to detect the antigen of the virus capsule, what we intend to do is to accelerate our response capacity much more”, added the expert.
However, Fernando Almeida left a warning: “You have to be careful because sometimes we can confuse rapid tests of another nature.”
“Portugal was one of the first countries to adhere to this system, even changing the case definition and, therefore, all this management of rapid antigen tests must be viewed with some care, regulation and rigor, not only at the level of the ability to test and the criteria that we use to harvest, but also for reading, ”added the president of the INSA Board of Directors.
According to Fernando Almeida, “the services must be perfectly regulated (for example, registered with the health regulator), the prescribers must be duly qualified professionals and their operators, who carry out the test, must be competent persons“. “It is an amazing tool, but we will have to be very careful in regulating all these indicators and tests ”, he concluded.
