Mike4 wrote:Quite a lot of new information contained in Dr Campbell's video from yesterday. These are the bits that caught my attention:
The ONS has been doing antigen swabs en masse. 14,500 randomly chosen (apparently) people tested between 4 to 14 May. 0.25% of these people tested positive and are infected. Extrapolated to the whole population, 165,000 people are currently infected and would test positive.
[...]
A 20 minute antigen test device is being trialled in Basingstoke. A fully portable device and believed to be as accurate as PCR test.
His style is very good and measured, and a good presenter not given to assumptions or exaggeration.
Forget the fountain pen abuse, you'd think a doctor would know the difference between an antigen and Nucleic Acid, and a minute or so later when discussing the 20 min test he correctly refers to the RNA test as a PCR test rather than Antigen test.
The "Basingstoke" 20 min test was developed in March and hit the news at the start of April, but for some reason only seemed to be picked up by the local newspapers.
And now to add to the confusion there actually is a proper Antigen test being trialled, which test for viral protein fragments in the swab, rather than the PCR test which looks for viral DNA. Both test for the presence of the virus.
Paul