“The McGowen government’s free RAT program has helped thousands of Western Australian families with testing requirements during the Omicron outbreak, and the WA is the only jurisdiction in the country to provide RAT for free,” she said.
“Rats are an approved diagnostic tool, and all rats used in the WA have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.”
The TGA has engaged the Doherty Institute to conduct independent laboratory testing of rapid tests for COVID-19 antigen to test the manufacturer’s claims regarding analytical sensitivity.
“All rapid tests for COVID-19 antigen must meet the minimum requirements to be approved by the authorities, and each manufacturer must provide test data showing that their test meets the minimum performance and sensitivity criteria,” the spokesman said.
The results are expected in June.
TGA has published a list of manufacturers who provided evidence of the performance of their tests.
Chinese saliva antigen manufacturers V-CHEK COVID-19 themselves reported that it showed performance against variants of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Kappa, Epsilon and Omicron.
The disclosure of the product indicates its ability to identify the Omicron variant as lower than other variants.
Dickin University epidemiologist Catherine Bennett said a saliva test – if a user spits into a tube or sucks a tampon – is usually considered less reliable than nasal swabs.
“But you didn’t expect them to fail with the person themselves on multiple tests if you know from other means that they have an active infection,” she said.
“It could be a problem with the party, it was incorrectly saved or just a short-term failure in production, but I’m still worried about hearing so many false negatives.”
Bennett said the V-CHEK brand requires a higher concentration of viral particles to detect a positive case, however, because Omicron infections come with a higher viral load, it should work just as well at the peak of infectivity.
“But they may be less accurate in early detection or overcome the peak in people who may still be infectious,” she said.
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-government-s-free-lollipop-rats-wildly-inaccurate-claim-parents-20220523-p5anqv.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
