NEW DELHI : The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday recommended using rapid antigen test kits for diagnosis of Covid-19 in hotspots and healthcare settings in combination with the RT-PCR test.
The apex biomedical research body said that recommendation is in view of its high specificity while relatively low sensitivity.Standard Q covid-19 Ag rapid antigen detection test has a very high specificity i.e.
ability to detect true negatives. Specificity ranged from 99.3 to 100% at the two sites. “Sensitivity of the test (i.e. ability to detect true positives) ranged from 50.6% to 84% in two independent evaluations, depending upon the viral load of the patient.