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.