FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test

Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by lultimouomo on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @02:04PM (#25446899)

The governments of Slovakia and of the Bozen province in Italy both organized an antigen testing of their whole population over the course of a weekend (Slovakia did this two times, two weeks apart). From what I can see both attempts were largely unsuccessful in sensibly reducing the spread of Covid, even temporarily.

Testing the whole population of Bozen with antigen tests yielded way less positive results than expected, so the feeling was that the tests were just not as sensitive as advertised.

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Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by ethanbond on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @02:06PM (#25446930)

I don’t believe this is what GP is referring to. Rather continuously testing people, say 2 times per week, en masse.

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Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by easytiger on Thursday December 17, 2020 @05:36AM (#25454348)

The antigen test also seems to be ineffective at detecting igg antibodies months after infection due to their half life and very few non clinically researched focused tests for t or b cells seem to have been carried out anywhere

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Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by lultimouomo on Thursday December 17, 2020 @07:51AM (#25455107)

These are antigen tests, not antibody tests.

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Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by phobosanomaly on Thursday December 17, 2020 @01:33AM (#25453202)

Is it possible that less people were actually infected than was expected?

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Re:FDA authorizes rapid, at-home coronavirus test by lultimouomo on Thursday December 17, 2020 @07:51AM (#25455105)

Possible, but seems unlikely.

In Bozen they mass-tested 65% of the population over the course of 3 days.

They were getting 540 positive PCR tests every 100k people a week in the week before the mass screening; the latter yielded 900 positive antigen results every 100k people; they got 435 positive PCR tests every 100k people in the week after the screening.

This 20% reduction in positive PCR tests seems mostly due to the lockdown, given that the week before the mass screening the reduction had been even greater, 32%.

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