so there's been some big news when it comes to coronavirus testing recently abbott laboratories
came out with a new rapid antigen test called binex now and it got emergency approval from
the food and drug administration the fda now an emergency use authorization by the fda is
permission given to unapproved products to be used in emergency to diagnose treat or prevent
serious or life-threatening conditions the test costs five dollars and detects covid 19 infection
in 15 minutes but before i deep dive further into this binex now test let's understand a little more
about how diagnostic testing works every test and medicine when looking to detect the disease has a
certain accuracy it doesn't matter if it's a ct scan looking for a clot in the lung or an
ekg looking for a heart attack there's a certain accuracy for each of these and this applies to
coronavirus testing as well by accuracy i mean a certain sensitivity in a certain specificity
sensitivity is how well the test recognizes the disease a test that has 100 sensitivity has a
perfect ability to detect that disease but in reality there's no test that's ever 100 sensitive
the closer a test is to 100 sensitivity the lower the likelihood of having a false negative
a false negative is when someone truly has the disease but the test comes back negative
but sometimes tests will come back positive even though the person doesn't truly have the disease
this is called a false positive so if a test is 100 specific that means there's a
zero chance that there can be a false positive so the closer the test is to 100 specificity
that means there's a lower likelihood of having a false positive ideally we want 100 percent
sensitivity and specificity but in reality no test is ever that with covid 19 the disease caused by
stars coronavirus 2 people want to know if they have a disease or have recently had the disease
there are different types of tests and different techniques for all these different types of tests
and different manufacturers for all the various tests so some are fda approved while others are not
and you have all sorts of people who want to make money selling these tests but the tests
are not necessarily accurate so testing is pretty complicated now i want to keep this video short
and to the point so i won't bog you down with all the details of that this new binax now rapid
antigen test made by abbott laboratories it uses a nasal swab in the same manner as a rapid flu test
now unlike most of the other nasal swabs used to test covid this one doesn't have to be jammed all
the way up in there and those are pretty painful the binax now test is a specially coated strip
that interacts with sars cov2 antigens after you get a sample from your nose you insert the tip
of the swab into the card you'll come across two holes here and don't worry comes with instructions
then you add a few drops of a chemical solution and voila there are lines that appear on the card
to indicate whether the sample is positive or negative just like a pregnancy test now
according to abbott and this is listed on the fda's website the test has 97.1 sensitivity
and 98.5 specificity and i'll put a link to that in the description below
the way that they get these numbers is that these tests are compared to samples that tested positive
with the pcr method and they then compare the results also i should
mention that the nih does independent tests to verify the accuracy of coronavirus tests
because it's hard to trust the company's own numbers but these are the numbers that the
company is claiming and so far there haven't been any independent tests that have been done
the fda said in a statement that negative results with abbott's test may need to be confirmed with
a lab test in some cases for example if there's a high suspicion that someone has coveted based
on their symptoms or based on their exposure also i should add that even if a test is perfect let's
say 100 sensitivity and specificity it's still possible to get a false negative not because of
the test itself sometimes it's due to the way the test is conducted meaning poor technique is used
some people can have the coronavirus in their lungs without necessarily having it in their nose
this was actually proven and i did a video on this in a study of patients who died of coronavirus
so 9 out of the 12 patients had the virus in their lungs but did not have it in their nose and they
used pcr testing for this so that's something else to keep in mind another aspect of this binex
now test is that i'll come with a free mobile app called navica which will allow users that
test negative to display the results as a digital health pass this digital health pass would serve
as a temporary date stamped result that is renewed each time a new test is taken with a typical pcr
test that are done the ones that are lab based you get excellent sensitivity but they take time in at
least a few hours or even longer to get results since the start of the pandemic nasal swab tests
that are sent to a lab have been standard for covid 19 screening while these pcr tests are
considered the most accurate they take a minimum few hours before we get results they're also
expensive and requires specialized machines and chemical reagents and shortages of these supplies
have led to delays in getting results sometimes up to a few days but with the new antigen test we can
quickly identify coveted infections and get them into quarantine plus it's cheap and it's being
mass produced abbott says that starting in october they're going to ship 50 million tests a month and
following this announcement the government said they'll be purchasing 150 million of
these tests from the company this will allow for massive testing moving one step closer to getting
this pandemic under control especially when it comes to getting schools and businesses reopened
and especially with the fall and winter coming which means cold and flu season
and with such an overlap of symptoms between the common cold flu and covid never mind allergies
this massive skill rapid testing will be all the more important and with this test along with the
other three fda approved rapid antigen tests they can't be done at home as they're only allowed to
be done by a healthcare professional so basically this means doctor's offices emergency rooms urgent
care centers pharmacies drive-throughs and some schools the three other rapid engine tests are
made by quiddell bechten dickinson and lumira dx now based on the information provided by the
companies themselves which the fda's website also provides the sofia antigen test made by coidel is
a more sensitive test compared to the bd antigen test sophia antigen test correctly identifies 96.7
percent of samples compared to 83.9 for the bd both of these tests identified all the negatives
the lumira dx has a 97.6 sensitivity there are a few companies that are developing
rapid at-home tests but so far none have fda approval so that's all i have for this video
thanks for watching there's also some other covid vaccine news with eight different
potential vaccines coming down the pike and a lot to unpack with that so if you haven't already like
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