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US approves new coronavirus antigen test with fast results

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Categories
    Science & Technology
  • Published
    12th May, 2020
  • US regulators have approved a new type of coronavirus test that administration officials have promoted as a key to opening up the country. The Food and Drug Administration announced emergency authorization for antigen tests developed by Quidel Corporation of San Diego.
  • The FDA said the test can rapidly detect fragments of virus proteins in samples collected from swabs swiped inside the nasal cavity.
  • The antigen test is the third type of test to be authorized by the FDA.
  • Currently, the only way to diagnose active COVID-19 is to test a patient's nasal swab for the genetic material of the virus. It can take hours and require expensive, specialized equipment mainly found at commercial labs, hospitals or universities.
  • A second type looks in the blood for antibodies, the proteins produced by the body days or weeks after fighting an infection.
  • Such tests are helpful for researchers to understand how far a disease has spread within a community, but they aren't useful for diagnosing active infections.
  • Antigen tests can diagnose active infections by detecting the earliest toxic traces of the virus rather than genetic code of the virus itself.

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