The National Medicines Directorate last Sunday approved the import and sale of these tests. They are a cheaper option in addition to PCR-RT tests.
Pharmaceutical companies already have approval to import and market antigen tests to detect COVID-19, according to the National Directorate of Medicines (DNM), an agency of the Department of Health, announced last Sunday.
The DNM explained in a statement made public on its social networks that it had carried out “the corresponding technical evaluations” for this type of research.
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Antigen tests, also called rapid tests, require a sample through a human nasopharyngeal swab. Then the sample is placed in a test, similar to a pregnancy test, and according to the chemical reaction in the test, the person knows if there are traces of antibodies that their body has made in the presence of the virus in their body.
However, this test does not accurately indicate whether the virus remains active in the person. A real-time result would always require an RT-PCR test.
The price of these antigen tests has not been determined by the DNM, nor has it been determined which brands or manufacturers do meet the quality standards. According to a study carried out at the beginning of the year by El Diario de Hoy, and despite the fact that these tests did not yet have this sanitary permit, there are already several private laboratories that offer this service, which varies between 70 and 100 dollars . .
Inexpensive rapid tests would be of great help to front-line personnel or other workers who need a test that indicates negative, epidemiologist Ricardo Lara assured in August 2020. EDH photo / file
In the case of Costa Rica, they cost about $ 60, and $ 40 in Guatemala, according to information on the Internet from labs that offer them.
The advantage of this type of test is that you actually have the response to the screening between 20 and 45 minutes.
Rapid tests have been an option for residents of several countries around the world, such as in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala, for months, to name cases.
In El Salvador, DNM inspectors have withdrawn these types of tests they found at two pharmaceutical sales on November 26, 2020.
The position of the institution has changed because in August 2020 the newly appointed National Director of Medicines, Noé Geovanni García, stated that this institution had not approved these types of rapid tests for COVID-19, as they “do not guarantee the results to be reliable”.
As a background, according to a statement by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this entity has distributed hundreds of thousands of rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 and measured their effectiveness in four Latin American countries: El Salvador (40,000), Ecuador (80,000), Honduras ( 40,000) and Suriname (30,000).