A top Illinois doctor on Friday defended the use of rapid antigen tests to detect COVID-19 because reports of false negatives and false positives have been published nationwide, raising questions about accuracy.
In an example that has garnered nationwide attention, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted that he took four Covid-19 rapid antigen tests on Thursday, and received two negative and two positive results.
CNBC Denying the coronavirus and its severity, Ka Musara Kasturi said he had taken two PCR tests, another type of Covid-19 tests, and was awaiting results.
In a daily coronavirus news briefing in Illinois on Friday, the state’s director of public health, Dr. Ngozi Ezek said the accuracy rate in both the antigen and PCR tests is over 90%, but PCR tests accept that the “gold standard.”
PCR tests detect the genetic material of the virus and are more sensitive than antigen tests, which detect specific proteins from the virus and are used in the U.S. Department of Disease Control. According to the centers.
“Take a pregnancy test. Your blood can be tested. You can get what you can get from a drug store … a drug store,” Ezekiel explained. “You can still use it and know it will give you a reliable result. Are there some cases in which it won’t come perfect? Yes, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you throw out a positive pregnancy. Test and say there is no way you can get pregnant. “
With PCR tests, sometimes the results are available on the same day, but that is not always the case. The CDC states that results of rapid antigen tests are often obtained within 15 to 30 minutes.
“We have a test that is good that will give us accurate results,” Ezekiel said in reference to rapid antigen tests. “It helps us identify cases as early as possible, which is very important when trying to isolate infected people as soon as possible, rather than spreading them at intervals while waiting for a PCR result.”
Illinois began distributing rapid antigen tests from the federal government last month, and Ajax expects more tests to be taken from “we will find more potential cases.”
From Friday, Nov. 6, Illinois health officials began including a “joint of confirmed cases and potential cases” under the guidance of the CDC.
A large proportion of the state’s “potential” cases are an increase in antigen testing across the state, as part of which the report was altered, Dr. Ezek said.
On Friday, the government J.B. Pritzker called the rapid tests “a kind of conspiracy somewhere” and said he would use all available tests on the state.
“It’s a big advantage to be able to test a lot of people and a lot of people in a very short period of time,” he added. “So we will take advantage of the fact that the federal government sent us those tests.”
Illinois on Friday filed more than 15,000 new confirmed and potential coronavirus cases, setting a record for the most single-day reports of new cases for the fourth day in a row.
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