Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district has received 3500 antigen kits and the rapid antigen tests for corona virus will be conducted shortly.
Health department sources said that they were hoping that the rapid antigen tests would help in increasing the number of tests and down the load of testing on labs, antigen kits allow faster to diagnosis.
It takes minimum 8 hours to get the results of via real- time polymerase chain reaction test .Antigen test can provide results within 30 minutes as compared to RT-PCR tests.
The antigen test will be conducted for emergency cases like delivery, surgery, persons with severe symptoms of covid 19, multiple organ failure and for those whose condition was critical. Dr Rathnakar district health officer said. “If a symptomatic patient test negative for covid 19. Then his throat swab sample would be sent for lab testing,’’
He said (DHO) “training is being imparted on the use of the kits. It will be used only for emergency cases in priority basis”.