Rapid Antigen Tests - Marginal REVOLUTION

Rapid antigen tests are starting to be adopted worldwide.

Reuters: Germany, where infections jumped by 4,122 on Tuesday to 329,453 total, has secured 9 million so-called antigen tests per month that can deliver a result in minutes and cost about 5 euros ($5.90) each. That would, in theory, cover more than 10% of the population.

The United States and Canada are also buying millions of tests, as is Italy, whose recent tender for 5 million tests attracted offers from 35 companies.

Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) now recommends antigen tests to complement existing molecular PCR tests, which have become the standard for assessing active infections but which have also suffered shortages as the pandemic overwhelmed laboratories and outstripped manufacturers’ production capacity.

See my earlier posts Frequent, Fast, and Cheap is Better than Sensitive, Infected versus Infectious, and Rapid Tests for more on these types of tests.