Abbott's $5 Rapid AntiGen Test FDA Approved
 

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...ation-n1238409

Size of a credit card, no additional gear needed. Uses less invasive nasal swab.

Could you theoretically put these at every airport around the country? Show the gate agent the test result on your phone during boarding? Probably too many hoops to jump through, but sounds like a good idea in my head.

I wonder what the sensitivity/specificity numbers are.

Yeah that's the potential issue... false positives.

Those are OK in a clinical setting where you just use a better test to confirm a positive, but a high false positive rate would be bad at the gate.

Thought news reported around 95% accurate

it appears this must be doing "via your healthcare provider" and is not an at-home test.

So how does this concept work in actual real world reality.

Is the traveling public expected to buy these and get an appointment at their doctor to get tested? How long are the results good for? If I was negative COVID today can I travel next week?

etc

XpresSpa is rolling it out the Abbott test in JFK and EWR next month, with more airports to come later. So maybe that’s a preview for what’s in store. I’m sure all the airlines are working behind the scenes to coordinate this test and other tests that’ll soon get FDA approval. We’ll see I guess.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/seeking...irport-testing

95% accurate in what way?

5% false negative is probably just fine in this context, since there will be very, very few true positives to begin with, so 5% of a very small number slipping through is not going be a catastrophe (especially with enhanced sanitation and social distancing).

5% false positive is a bit much. People will not be happy if they buy a ticket and then get turned away because the TSA says they have covid when they don't. 10,000 pax/day = 500 sent home erroneously.

You'd need a pretty high specificity to not alienate your customers.

Hard to tell from news report what the % is referencing.

But as I was told when tested with existing process....'we have many false negatives with this test. So you can have it and still get a negative result."

This new test will have to be field tested with actual people to develop the legitimate base of effectiveness i suppose.

I don't see how this is any more of a hoop than regular security and couldn't be incorporated in the normal screening. TSA is already $5 one way, so adding another $5-$10 and a few more minutes to security is completely acceptable, considering we're moving a fraction of people we used to. I guess if you pop positive you take the test again, considering statistically one or two people would get inaccurate results on each flight. This could really help us.