Illustration of a diagnostic antigen test .. – G. Durand / 20 Minutes
- Forty false negatives were recorded during the massive anti-Covid screening operation, organized from January 11 to 16, in Roubaix, in the North.
- This result confirms the unreliability of antigenic tests compared to PCRs.
- However, the Regional Health Agency considers that these data cannot be used scientifically because of the low number of cases tested positive.
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Should we trust the results of an antigen test? The controversy is not new but it is once again taking shape with the forty false negatives recorded during the massive anti-Covid screening operation, organized from January 11 to 16, in Roubaix, in the North.
According to the Hauts-de-France Regional Health Agency (ARS) which has just unveiled the results, this figure cannot be scientifically exploited because of the few positive cases detected during the campaign. Of the 5,304 tests carried out, 66 people were immediately detected positive thanks to the antigenic tests, while 106 positive PCR tests had been counted. A rapid calculation nevertheless makes it possible to establish a very low efficiency rate of around 60% for the antigenic tests.
“PCR tests remain the benchmark”
Or, a study conducted in August and September by the CHU Henri-Mondor, in Créteil, in the Val-de-Marne already evoked “an overall sensitivity” of the antigenic method “of the order of 60% compared to the PCR”. Nothing new, therefore, except that the device adopted during the Roubaix screening did not suffer from any bias. Indeed, it is the same sampler who carried out both PCR and antigen tests. So the difference cannot be explained by a more or less well done sample.
“This result confirms what we already knew, namely that PCR tests are more sensitive and that they remain the benchmark. It is moreover the PCRs which are requested, for example, when boarding for a foreign country and which are carried out in certain schools with massive saliva tests ”, explains Jean-Charles Dugimont, president of the union of biologists of Nord-Picardie, one of the organizers of the Roubaisian testing campaign.
No hospitalization
What is the interest, therefore, of these antigenic tests? “They make it possible to detect the most contagious cases, that is to say during the first phase of the disease which lasts six to seven days”, specifies the biologist. Then these tests lose their sensitivity and only a PCR test can reveal a person in the second phase of the disease.
And Jean-Charles Dugimont specifies: “They are useful when you want to quickly test a population. In a performance hall, for example, where you want to test people before entering to reduce the risk of contamination. It’s a kind of first sorting ”,
Moreover, this lack of reliability should not hide the good news of this screening campaign in Roubaix. A month later, “none of the people who tested positive were hospitalized,” says Jean-Charles Dugimont. You should know that, in the Nord department, the number of hospitalizations with Covid-19 diagnosis exceeds a thousand patients.
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