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Infectious Disease Doctor Explains Accuracy of Antigen Testing
DES MOINES, Iowa — Positive coronavirus cases have spiked this week in Iowa. Infectious disease doctors said this is partly due to students returning to school as well as the introduction of antigen testing.
“Antigen testing is much more rapid. My understanding is some of the tests that we’re looking at are a 15-minute turnaround time. It actually looks for products or proteins produced by the virus. As a result, it is not as sensitive, but in an outpatient setting, it’s better than not having capacity, or it’s better than having to wait 48 hours to get a result,” MercyOne Infectious Disease Consultant and Medical Director of Healthcare Epidemiology Dr. Ravi Vemuri said.
The accuracy rate for this test is 96.4%. Vemuri says the positive results are almost always correct, but there is a 5% chance for a false negative. In that case a patient would have to take the standard PCR test and isolate until they get the results back.
According to CDC guidance, doctors should limit antigen tests on asymptomatic people. Dr. Vemuri is among many others, including state epidemiologist Dr. Pedati, who disagrees with this.
“Forty percent of us may be asymptomatic, so we don’t want to go around spreading it to all sorts of people. It would be nice to know, so I think as testing capacity is increasing, we should do as many tests as we possibly can,” Dr. Vemuri said.
MercyOne does not yet have antigen testing but hopes to get it in the near future. UnityPoint said they will not be using antigen testing at this time and will continue using PCR testing.
