 |
| People wait to receive COVID-19 tests at an outdoor testing center in Yeouido Park, Seoul, Friday. Yonhap |
Non-capital areas likely to toughen distancing rules
By Bahk Eun-ji
Self-testing kits for COVID-19 are believed to be one of the factors that has caused the sudden onslaught of the fourth wave of the pandemic with some COVID-19 self-test kit users showing false negative results that were later found to be positive.
Experts point out the government should have conducted monitoring and collected data on the efficacy of the kits prior to allowing them to be sold to customers.
A self-testing kit allows the general public to collect samples on their own and confirm whether they are positive or negative for COVID-19. Such products have been on the market since late April as a supplementary to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test as they offer a much faster result and are more convenient to use.
But their accuracy had been called in to question even before they went on sale, as the kits are less sensitive than the PCR tests used in screening centers. Earlier this year, a research team led by infectious medicine professor Kim Nam-joong at Seoul National University Hospital found that the sensitivity of one self-testing kit product was only 17.5 percent of the PCR test; while manufacturers of the kits claim they have a sensitivity of over 90 percent.
In this regard, experts point out that using such self-testing kits could have been a contributing factor to the fourth wave of the pandemic here, where daily new infections have been hovering over 1,000 for 10 days as of Friday, along with two other major causes: the prevalence of the highly contagious Delta variant and the government’s hasty easing of social distancing rules.
Medical workers say there have been cases of people who have tested positive on PCR tests but say they had tested negative earlier with the self-testing kits. Those people could have then have been spreading the virus unknowingly to those they came into contact with before testing positive.
“There have been great concerns since the introduction of the self-testing kits due to their low accuracy,” said Kim Mi-na, professor of laboratory medicine at Asan Medical Center.
 |
| Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum speaks via videoconference on the government’s antivirus response at the Government Complex Seoul, Friday. Yonhap |
The health authorities also hinted at the possibility of such “silent spreaders” due to false results of self-testing kits.
“We do not yet know the exact number of such cases as we haven’t collected the relevant data, but there is a possibility that some people tested positive later although they had received a negative result through self-testing kits,” Park Young-joon, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters’ epidemiologic investigator, said in a press briefing, Thursday.
But other experts say self-testing kits play a useful role in finding asymptomatic patients.
“The self-testing kits are already widely used in the United States and the United Kingdom,” said Chon Eun-mi, a professor of respiratory medicine at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital.
“In order to blame silent spreaders who used self-testing kits as a cause of the fourth wave, relevant data should be available first.”
Chon said at the moment, the priority should be focusing on increasing the number of tests and finding the asymptomatic cases as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum urged local governments outside the Seoul metropolitan area to consider banning private gatherings of more than four people, ― the same as the regulation for the metropolitan area ― amid growing concerns of the virus spreading to those regions as many people in the capital are traveling to other parts of the country in the summer holiday season.
“In the case of non-metropolitan areas, the number of people allowed for private gatherings varies from region to region, such as four, six and eight, which can cause confusion to the public,” Kim said.
“Considering the balloon effect and the increase in travel during the summer holiday season, tougher quarantine measures should be considered to curb the country’s daily new virus cases.”
The central and local governments will discuss the matter and announce their decision as early as Sunday.
For its part, the local government of Jeju Island, one of the most popular holiday destinations in the country, made its own decision to raise its social distancing scheme by one notch to Level 3 starting Monday.
Under the toughened social distancing level, private gatherings of five or more are prohibited, and restaurants and cafes can only operate until 10 p.m., while nightlife entertainment facilities will be closed.
Self-test kit false negatives may be partial cause of 4th pandemic wave
Source: Buhay Kapa PH
0 Comments