nucleic acid testing, Antigen testing, which is the best

COVID-19 has been more than 3 years old since the end of 2019, and there have been many variants, such as Alpha, Beta, Delta, and now Omicron. Although the lethality rate has declined, the transmission power has been stronger than once. Now more than 200 million people are infected, causing millions of people to die and become the most serious epidemic disease after the Spanish influenza. In order to effectively detect COVID-19 and block the virus, nucleic acid testing emerge as the times require.

The most common method is to detect by fluorescence quantitative PCR reaction. The collected samples include pharyngeal swab, nasal swab, sputum, etc. the collected samples are immersed in the reagent tube with enzyme and detected by PCR reaction. This method has high accuracy, but the disadvantage is that it takes a long time. Usually, it takes at least a few hours or even 1-2 days from the collection of samples to the completion of final detection.

In order to shorten the detection time, Antigen testing came into being, Antigen testing is detected on the test strip through the combination reaction of antigen and antibody. It is convenient,less-cost and fast. Generally, the results can be obtained in 15-20 minutes. However, the antigen antibody reaction will be false positive due to some interference, so the accuracy is lower than that of nucleic acid detection, but it is a good supplement to the detection method.