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| Pacific Daily News
Further testing in Yigo yields 33 more cases of COVID-19
Free COVID-19 testing is offered to community members in the Federated States of Micronesia at Yigo Gymnasium on October 17, 2020, after 33 more people tested positive for the virus during an ongoing public health outreach in the provinces. Yigo subdivisions of Gil Baza and Zero Down.
The Department of Public Health and Human Services will distribute around 30,000 antigen tests for COVID-19, spokeswoman Janela Carrera said.
Guam has received around 30,000 BinaxNow antigen tests after validation and quality control, she said. The plan is to distribute the tests to hospitals and primary care clinics for urgent care and symptomatic patients, she said.
It is not known when the tests will be distributed; Public Health continues to work on its distribution plan, she added.
BinaxNow tests can provide patients with results within minutes and according to information provided by the Food and Drug Administration, if a person has symptoms, the tests are 97.1% accurate in determining if a person is positive for the coronavirus. and accurate to 98.5%. to determine if they are negative.
It is not yet clear how accurate the tests are when used on people without symptoms.
Most of the tests done on Guam are done through PCR tests, which detect the genetic material of the virus and can detect low levels of the virus. But the tests must be handled by laboratories that need skilled workers and sufficient chemical supplies.
And if there are a large number of samples that need to be tested, it can take days for a person to get results.
COVID Update: 112 people tested positive for COVID-19, Guam’s overall total now stands at 6,346
Ded: 14 people evacuated due to the fire at the Dededo structure
Faster test
Antigenic tests, which detect proteins, are often less sensitive than PCR tests. But some say antigen tests, which can produce results in minutes and are less expensive, can identify when a person is infectious and is most likely to pass the virus on to others.
BinaxNow tests look like credit cards and don’t require any special equipment to get the results.
The test is similar to a pregnancy test – it will show one line for a negative result and two lines for a positive result. A nasal swab containing samples taken from a patient is placed in the card and after 15 minutes the results are displayed on the card.
The test detects the presence of SARS-CoV-2 protein antigens in people suspected of COVID-19 by their health care provider who are within the first seven days of onset of symptoms.
The diagnostic test cleared by the United States Food and Drug Administration does not require any instrumentation to test samples and instead determines a negative or positive result for COVID-19, the FDA said.
According to Abbott, the company that performed the test, the card can be used as a first line of defense to identify people who are currently infected and who should self-isolate to help prevent the spread of the disease.
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