The worth of antigen checks is predicated on a easy tradeoff. They’re not as delicate as polymerase chain response (PCR) checks, that are the gold customary for diagnosing COVID-19, however they’re only when folks with the virus are most infectious. And since they’re cheaper, quicker, and simpler to carry out, the flexibility to do extra checks can balance out the decrease sensitivity. If their comfort means you’re taking eight antigen checks a month, versus, say, two PCR checks a month, the antigen regime would possibly catch circumstances that the PCR regime misses. One recent analysis means that utilizing antigen checks on a inhabitants three days every week can be just about as efficient in catching infections as utilizing the superior PCR check the identical variety of instances.
However for an efficient antigen-testing plan to work, the checks need to be given ceaselessly and the outcomes rapidly reported. Whereas PCR checks are carried out at labs, that are practiced in reporting outcomes to well being businesses, antigen checks are meant for locations comparable to faculties and nursing houses, which need to develop their very own reporting methods. And that’s been an issue for the reason that checks began going out in Could. By August, the check producers Quidel and BD combined to provide 3 million antigen checks every week. However by mid-September, states had reported solely 215,000 antigen-test outcomes. There was, as The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer wrote then, “a gap the place knowledge about antigen testing ought to be.” On the time, solely six states made antigen-testing numbers obtainable (now 20 states do), and extrapolating these outcomes steered that just one.4 million antigen checks had been carried out nationwide.
The federal authorities pressed on with antigen testing, although, and ordered 150 million checks from Abbott when the corporate’s extra superior expertise got here on-line. In October, the Related Press reported that whereas about half of the nation’s testing capability consisted of antigen checks, the general reported check numbers didn’t replicate the flood of antigen checks that had made their strategy to states. In November, The New York Instances found the identical gap within the knowledge, reporting that state and native public-health officers have been on the hunt for rapid-testing services that weren’t disclosing their knowledge.
And that gap doesn’t appear to have gone wherever. On December 14, throughout a biweekly CDC name with laboratory representatives to handle their points in coping with COVID-19, the Division of Well being and Human Companies said {that a} majority of the greater than 50 million antigen checks which have been distributed to states “don’t have check outcomes flowing to HHS.” In accordance with the CDC knowledge, that quantity is now as much as 94.4 million. Knowledge collected by the COVID Monitoring Mission equally counsel that states will not be reporting antigen-test outcomes. Out of greater than 235 million check outcomes reported since June, solely about 9 million are clearly reported as antigen-test outcomes. Admittedly, many states nonetheless don’t cut up out separate figures for antigen checks and PCR checks. However even among the many states that do, antigen checks make up solely about 10 % of all checks they’ve reported. Extrapolated nationwide, that may be about 27 million checks, or a bit greater than 1 / 4 of the checks the federal authorities has distributed up to now.
