Coronavirus infection?
Doctors from Munich and Stuttgart urgently warn against rapid antigen tests.
These have a crucial flaw.
Coronavirus pandemic in Germany
: The number of
Covid-19 cases
is high at the beginning of 2021 and
strict corona rules
apply nationwide
.
Researchers from
Munich (Bavaria)
and
Stuttgart (Baden-Württemberg) are
investigating the effectiveness of
rapid antigen tests
- with an alarming result.
Accordingly, the
Corona
rapid tests have
significant deficiencies.
Munich / Stuttgart - When it comes to the
Wiesn (Oktoberfest) in Munich
;
about
Bundesliga
soccer games
*
;
or about concerts and live events - in the
coronavirus pandemic
, it is not uncommon
to refer to controls using
corona
antigen rapid
tests.
But what do they really bring?
A new study has addressed this question.
The result is sobering: As a result, the
rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 are
unreliable, inadequate and inadequate.
Rapid antigen tests for the coronavirus: studies from Munich and Stuttgart alert
German scientists from the
National Research
Network
of University
Medicine
on
Covid-19
emphasize
in a position paper
that the
sensitivity of the
rapid antigen tests
is in some cases considerably lower than stated by the manufacturers
.
"According to our investigations, only six out of ten
Sars-Cov-2 infections are
detected," says Oliver Keppler, head of virology at the
Max Pettenkofer Institute of Munich's Ludwig Maximilians University
(
Bavaria
): “On the other hand, two out of a hundred also receive non-infected persons a false positive result. "
Coronavirus pandemic: rapid antigen tests for corona are unreliable, according to a study
Two
Munich university hospitals
tested the quality of the procedure on a total of 859 smears - the
quick
test
most commonly used
in
Germany
and a second product
were on the test bench
.
One finding:
Antigen rapid tests
could mostly detect “highly infectious people with high viral loads”, Keppler continued: “However, it is not the case that an infection can be reliably ruled out by the negative result of a rapid test.
By far not."
Colleagues from
Stuttgart
confirmed the results of the study.
Specifically: 459 patients were tested with two different procedures in the emergency room of the Stuttgart Katharinen Hospital.
Corona in Germany: PCR tests are probably much safer than rapid antigen tests
The result: Here, too, the reliability of the
rapid antigen tests was
significantly worse than that of the
PCR method
.
This was especially true for patients without
corona symptoms
.
(pm) * tz.de is part of the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editors network