"Result in 15 minutes": Serological testing entry and increase in morbidity flood the network with scanners marketing home test kits • Prof. Barbash: "Most of them - garbage"

• Serological examination // Photo: AFP

The epidemic comes with the plague: Against the background of the rise in morbidity in Israel and the entry of serological examinations into the sick funds, speculators are currently marketing home serological test kits at exorbitant prices - even though the Ministry of Health has not given its approval for use and is not at all sure that the result will be credible.

An antibody test (or another name - a serological test) is a simple blood sample test that examines the presence of antibodies that our immune system has developed as a response to the infection with the corona virus, so you can tell if we have contracted the virus even though we have no symptoms.

So far, no importer or marketer in Israel has been authorized to market home serological examinations, and they are only done at health funds. In a brief search we did on Facebook, we found some people considering home appraisals, with one of the posts claiming to be a "fresh check."

So we asked one of the sellers on Facebook what exactly it was. He claims that you will receive the result in just 15 minutes and the cost of one kit is NIS 80. When we asked which company the product belonged to we got the answer "I need to check".

Businesswoman Nicole Raidman also posted to Story on her Instagram account last week that she had conducted an antibody test for VivaCheck's Corona. With a unique tool that comes in the kit, Raidman stabbed her finger, then pumped a few drops. And, as with the pregnancy test, Raidman's examination showed only one stripe - which actually indicates that she did not stick to Corona.

A similar phenomenon occurred with the outbreak of the epidemic in Israel in early March, when social networks offered people home kits for corona testing, which are allegedly approved by global health organizations, promising results within minutes and at exorbitant prices.

Professionals warn

"A lot of proposals go around the net and the vast majority are garbage," says former Health Ministry director Professor Gabi Barbash in a conversation with "Israel Today," adding: "I wouldn't buy a test from any such site and for any such reason. I wouldn't trust them - not in case the answer comes out positive or if the answer goes out negative. In fact, in Israel, people must rely only on the official professional bodies that are the HMO examination laboratories and the Ministry of Health that have now begun serological examinations. "

"The rest of everything on the network is unreliable, usually garbage and you can't trust them, you don't know who produces them, what responsibility it takes, what chances of the test, who ever examined the test in depth. As a serious person, I would not trust anything but what was done in Israel, "Barbash adds.

Participating in the preparation of the news: Assaf Golan