The Jalisco Health Department this week rolled out a new program to apply rapid antigen testing for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.
The tests, which give results in 15 minutes and don’t require a laboratory or a machine for processing, detect specific proteins — known as antigens — on the surface of the virus, and can identify people who are at the peak of infection, when virus levels in the body are likely to be high.
In a press release this week, the SSJ noted that the “World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the diagnostic tests as affordable, reliable, accurate, fast … they can be performed anywhere and could positively transform the response to Covid-19, especially in remote communities.”
Like the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, antigen tests require a health-care professional to swab the back of a person’s nose or throat. However, antigen tests aren’t as sensitive as the PCR version and, health experts warn, a person with low amounts of virus in their body might get a false-negative result.
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