Jeremy Fernandez explains how to take a Rapid Antigen Test and how they actually work to determine whether or not you have COVID-19.
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more than 40 million coronavirus tests have been taken in australia since the pandemic began all of them have been the very accurate pcr tests but pcr tests are expensive in fact we’ve run up a medicare bill of 1.5 billion dollars and the results take time at the height of the outbreaks there were reports of people waiting up to five days for results but there’s another type of test it’s cheaper faster and you can do it yourself after two years most of us would by now be familiar with the image of the coronavirus and its characteristic spike proteins these spikes are its strength and its weakness they are how the virus gains access to our cells but they also produce a protein that both the vaccine and the tests can detect they’re called antigens and they trigger the body’s immune system to produce antibodies they’re also the substance that the rapid antigen test detects the clue is in the name there’s a range of test kits and they all come with the same basic parts this one has a swab inside a sealed wrapper an extraction tube that holds the testing liquid a lid for the tube and the test strip you can only use the test once and only for one person first we need to get set up by taking a swab now make sure you don’t touch the soft part with your fingers then take the swab from your nose or throat for your throat you want to try to take the swab from the area around where your tonsils are or were it’s really important that the swab doesn’t touch your tongue your teeth or your gums then you place the fabric tip into the liquid in the extraction tube you roll it around inside here for 15 seconds now you take out the swab set it aside and put the lid onto the extraction tube then you unpack your testing strip you squeeze a few drops onto the bottom of the testing strip now this next part might remind you of how a pregnancy test works the strip has three stages that the sample passes through the first stage is made of antibodies sitting on the testing strip as the sample moves down the strip any virus particles bind to those antibodies next along the strip a second line made of similar antibodies that are stuck hard to the paper if the virus is present in the sample the two will bind together and a line will appear on the strip the third line is a control strip the antibodies will bind to this line no matter what indicating the sample has made it all the way across the strip and the test has run correctly so a positive test shows up as two lines for a negative test the antibodies will move straight past the first line because there’s no virus to bind them together but they will still bind to the control line this means a negative test will be displayed by just a single line which is what i’ve got right here simple enough right all up the test takes about 15 to 30 minutes compared to hours if not days for the pcr test that we’ve relied on throughout the pandemic the antigen test is also relatively cheap compared to the pcr but the trade-off is it’s less reliable studies show its sensitivity varies from 40 to 80 percent it also depends on when the person takes the test because by design the antigen test is more likely to give a false negative meaning it works quite well when the virus is most active in the body that’s just before the onset of symptoms and for the first few days once those symptoms have set in as time passes and the person’s viral load drops the likelihood that the antigens will get past the antibodies on the test strip goes up and so does the risk that an infected person will get a false negative result meanwhile this patient can still of course pass the virus onto others unknowingly taking these sorts of quick tests of home work or school has become the latest tool to fight the virus we know that these tests are not they’re not perfect but they’re important part i guess of our of our response moving forward there are currently six tests that are approved for use at home and more than 30 that are approved for settings such as aged care the tga says it’s constantly reviewing the data on those tests and revising the list a rapid additive test is a good option when a fast result is essential and when a person has either recently been exposed to covert 19 or is in the first several days of experiencing symptoms anyone with symptoms who gets a negative test result from an antigen test and anyone with no symptoms who gets a positive test result from an antigen test should go and get a pcr test which remains the gold standard and is free the other medical advice to remember is that testing is just one part of the equation to lower our risk of contracting over 19. people should absolutely still be prioritizing vaccination and other strategies that help lower the risk of spread you know each of these things combined produces the risk further nothing obviously can reduce the risk to zero but they each play a part so it’s one more tool to arm ourselves with as we keep living with this virus you
