![]() “There will be some benefit there … but whether that benefit is sufficient is the question.” There’s the issue of false positives, false negatives and whether people who do test positive will self-isolate, said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia. ![]() How do experts weigh up the pros and cons? In a study that looked at people without symptoms, sensitivity fell to roughly 49% versus PCR tests. When they were initially piloted in Liverpool last year, scientists found that in a population of mostly people with symptoms, the test’s sensitivity fell to about 58% when administered by self-trained staff versus 79% when tested by laboratory scientists. The reliability of Innova tests also depends on who administers them. In people with symptoms, SD Biosensor, which has been approved by the World Health Organization, picked up 88% of infections while the Innova test picked up 58%. Innova tests – the lateral flow tests used by the UK government – would pick up 35 of the 50, but 90 would wrongly be told they are infected.Ī review of LFTs carried out by international experts suggested the test’s brand played a key role. However, according to Jon Deeks, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, among 10,000 people with a prevalence rate of 0.5% you would expect 50 people to have Covid. Just how reliable are rapid tests?Īccording to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), analyses from NHS test and trace show that for every 1,000 lateral flow tests carried out there is less than one false positive result. In contrast, rapid tests don’t need a lab and typically offer results in 30 minutes or less, but that speed comes at the cost of sensitivity and specificity – the ability to detect disease or the absence of disease. ![]() In the case of PCR, the sample is sent to a lab for processing and analysis by technicians and the results are very accurate. LFTs do not detect which variant of Covid-19 an infected person has.īoth tests require a swab from the back of the nose or throat. They differ from gold-standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which are engineered to find genetic material called RNA that instructs the virus to make these proteins. Lateral flow tests (LFTs) – also called rapid tests – look for proteins on the surface of the virus that causes Covid-19, to ascertain the presence of the pathogen. ![]()
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