Research shows that rapid antigen tests are performing as well at detecting the most recent dominant variants as they did with the earliest strains in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The chytrid fungal disease has been decimating frog populations worldwide for decades, and research progress has been slow. A new method for detecting the disease could help change its course.
Rapid tests can be an incredibly useful tool for early detection of COVID-19. Unfortunately, they sometimes leave people with more questions than answers.
Refugees and asylum seekers move through this refugee camp in Musina, South Africa.
Photo credit should read Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images
Dion O'Neale, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
With access to testing limited and without other ways of measuring likely infection rates, New Zealand’s confirmed COVID cases are likely to be just a fraction of the total.
COVID self-testing is widespread in developed countries.
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One of the consequences of the failure of developing countries like South Africa to authorise self-testing is that it is driving a thriving black market.
One study suggests the virus takes an average of 36 days to clear from the body after symptoms first appear.
A researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, works on the omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus in December 2021. African countries were penalized by Canada’s travel ban even though they discovered the Omicron variant via complex sequencing work when western nations failed to.
(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Ottawa’s travel ban against African countries made clear its underlying policy: What matters is not your test result, but where you’ve been. It’s yet another example of anti-Africa discrimation.
The public has been left to their own devices as all our previous safeguards collapse around us. We urgently need a “vaccines-plus” strategy to flatten the curve.
Rapid testing for COVID-19 is an extra safety measure that can help prevent spread of infection, and help you have a more normal holiday, especially if you are visiting vulnerable people.
The key to rapid antigen testing is to test early in the course of COVID-19 infection, ideally several times 24 hours apart.
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The two types of COVID-19 tests – antigen and PCR – work in very different ways, which is why one is fast but less accurate and the other is slow and precise.