Antigen tests will be a game-changer – PAHO director
Published:Thursday | October 15, 2020 | 12:16 AMNadine Wilson-Harris/Staff Reporter
As Jamaica prepares to start offering antigen testing for COVID-19 in the coming days, director of the Pan America Health Organisation (PAHO), Dr Carissa Etienne, has issued a stern warning that the distribution of these tests should not be discriminatory.
“Innovations cannot have impact if they don’t reach the people that need them the most,” Etienne said during a PAHO COVID-19 virtual press briefing yesterday.
Etienne, who is also the regional director for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), said antigen testing would be a game-changer although PCR testing still remains the golden standard for testing for COVID-19.
“To capitalise on the power of this new diagnostic [test], countries must make them available and accessible to everyone irrespective of who they are or where they live, and we must do that to bring us closer to our promise of help for all,” she said.
Etienne noted that the pandemic is now hitting remote areas in the region and is now affecting indigenous groups.
As of October 13, there have been more than 18 million COVID-19 cases and more than 519,000 deaths reported in the Americas.
She said the need for accurate, affordable diagnostic tests to determine when someone has been infected with COVID-19 is necessary as centralised labs were being flooded with samples for PCR testing, which, generally, take much longer to process.
“By providing results quickly, the new tests empower front-line health workers to better manage cases by isolating patients to prevent further spread and to begin treatment immediately,” she said.
The PAHO director said that the organisation currently has hundreds of thousands of antigen tests and will procure millions more in the coming weeks. Some are being distributed to countries where pilots are to be conducted, but for the most part, respective governments are expected to procure the tests.
An initial 80,000 antigen test kits are being procured by Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and Wellness, which anticipates that antigen testing for COVID-19 will begin in late October. The test will be administered only to symptomatic patients and is to be piloted in major hospitals by the National Public Health Laboratory. Full implementation will follow in other hospitals and health centres and then gradually by private laboratory operators.
Deputy Director of Emergency Management at PAHO, Sylvain Aldighieri, has given the assurance that the tests have gone through a very strict validation process with the intervention of WHO.
“Two different manufacturers are producing the two tests that have been validated at this moment,” he said. “One of the manufacturers is based in Asia. The other manufacturer has her plant in Europe and the United States.”