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What is the sensitivity and specificity of rapid
antigen test?
Dr. Ravi: We have conducted the evaluation at IMR. Basically, our take is that at one point,
there were not many kits with good sensitivity. At one point, our cut off point was 80%.
There was only 1 kit that managed to reach that high sensitivity level. Sensitivity is the ability
to pick the sample correctly (those who have COVID-19) while specificity is the ability
picking those without COVID-19, (or picking other coronavirus or those with other
respiratory diseases). We would have the kits evaluated, currently 1 is being evaluated, but
there would be more. When we do evaluation of rapid tests, we need to have patients in the
hospital, but currently, we do not have many patients in the hospital. We have to optimise
spike samples and we are currently doing it really well, we have tested 2 kits so far.
