Recently, the epidemic situation in my country is frequent, and the prevention and control situation is complicated and severe. According to the needs of epidemic prevention and control, the monitoring mode of “antigen screening and nucleic acid diagnosis” has been rapidly promoted, that is, adding antigen detection as a supplement to nucleic acid detection. Antigen testing has become a hot spot of public concern in the past two days: what exactly is antigen testing? Where can I buy antigen testing reagents? Who can use antigen reagents for home testing? Will it be too difficult to operate by myself? Then you don’t need to do nucleic acid testing… Don’t worry, we have everything you want to know.
First, what is an antigen test?
To judge whether the new coronavirus has invaded the human body, there are currently three main detection methods: nucleic acid detection, antigen detection and antibody detection.
The new coronavirus is an RNA virus that mainly includes four structural proteins: the spike protein on the surface, the membrane protein, the envelope protein, and the nucleocapsid protein inside. Antigen detection usually measures the highly expressed nucleocapsid protein, namely the N protein, and detects whether it is infected with the new coronavirus through the binding reaction between the antigen and the antibody in the reagent.
Compared with complex nucleic acid detection, antigen detection can be performed at home or in primary medical and health institutions. The detection speed is faster and the operation is more convenient, but the accuracy is lower, and it is generally used in the early stage of infection.
Secondly, where can we buy antigen detection reagents?
As of March 13, the State Food and Drug Administration has approved a total of 10 new coronavirus antigen self-testing products, including: Beijing Lepu Diagnostics, Chongqing Mingdao Jietest, Tianjin Boaosaisi, etc., and some of the new coronavirus antigen tests that have been approved for marketing are currently listed. The kits have already been pre-sold on the online platform.
It is reported that Beijing Lepu Diagnostics has taken the lead in launching spot sales on March 17 through its “Good Body-Health Management” APP platform, and users can download and log in to the platform to purchase. At the same time, the product has been simultaneously launched on the Jingdong platform for pre-sale, and it is expected to officially start sales on March 23.
In addition, experts remind: Antigen reagent home testing is used for screening specific populations, which is conducive to improving the ability of “early detection” of new coronavirus
In view of the characteristics of the current Aobi Chronovirus, which is highly contagious and concealed, but with mild symptoms, antigen screening at home is conducive to improving the ability of “early detection”. If you are one of the following groups, it is recommended that you make arrangements in advance:
1) Persons who go to primary medical and health institutions for treatment, have respiratory symptoms, fever and other symptoms and have symptoms within 5 days;
2) Isolation observation personnel, including home isolation observation, close contact and sub-close contact, entry isolation observation, closed control area and personnel in control area;
3) Community residents who need antigen self-testing.
However, all friends who have done nucleic acid testing know the sour feeling of being stabbed in the nose. If you do it yourself, will the difficulty factor be too large? Don’t worry, it’s not that difficult to follow the picture below:
Finally, an important question for you: Is it possible to do without nucleic acid testing after antigen testing?
Antigen detection has false positives, and its results cannot replace nucleic acid detection results. According to the introduction of relevant experts, antigen detection is detected on the test strip through the binding reaction of antigen and antibody, which is convenient and quick, and the result is usually available in 15-20 minutes. However, the antigen-antibody reaction appears false positive due to the existence of some interference, and the methodological specificity is less than 100%. For nucleic acid amplification detection, due to the design of primers and probes, the methodological specificity is 100%, and the sensitivity of nucleic acid detection analysis is about 100 to 1000 times higher than that of antigen.
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责编：李然 ]