There still aren't enough Covid-19 tests in the U.S. Will rapid tests help? - NBC News

As a third surge of the coronavirus threatens much of the United States, public health experts across the country say there still aren’t enough tests available to keep the virus under control.

Right now, some doctors and hospitals are offering rapid tests to patients, which can give results in minutes.

And over the next few weeks, major pharmacy retailers like CVS and Walgreens say they’ll start offering a type of rapid test called an antigen test, which some hope will give Americans more access to testing.

“There’s a need for testing across the board,” Gigi Kwik Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told NBC News.

In response, the federal government is pushing rapid or point-of-care testing, as opposed to the gold standard polymerase chain reaction, or PCR test, which requires samples to be sent to a lab for analysis and can take days to come back.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Health and Human Services started sending states rapid antigen tests made by Abbott Labs.

Chan School of Public Health, said Friday on a call with journalists.

The problem is that rapid tests aren’t as sensitive as PCR tests, with as many as 1 in 4 results being false negatives.

A new study that looked at Abbott’s antigen test, called BinaxNow, found that it could work as a complement to PCR testing

“PCR remains the gold standard, but a strategic combination of these tests could assist in public health settings where rapid results and knowledge of transmission risk on the day of testing are critical.”