Indonesia Requests for Support of Rapid Antigen Test Kits to WHO
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1 October 2020 20:22 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Wiku Adisasmito, the spokesperson for the Covid-19 mitigation task force, said the Indonesian government had officially submitted a request for rapid antigen test kits to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The test kit is expected to bring more accurate results than that of the antibody-based rapid tests that are being used in the country thus far.
“We have communicated with WHO representatives in Indonesia, and we have asked for WHO assistance regarding this rapid test kit,” he said in a press conference on Thursday, October 1, 2020.
According to Wiku, the WHO has provided 120 million antigen-based rapid test kits for 133 countries in the world. The priorities include middle-income countries and states recording a large number of Covid-19 cases.
He added that the test kit was of high quality and was recommended by WHO. Also, the accuracy would be higher and the result could be obtained within 15 to 30 minutes.
However, Wiku underlined that the rapid antigen test would only be used for screening purposes as it was not a definitive diagnostic test whether a person is infected with Covid-19 or not.
“This is for the screening process before the public takes a diagnostic test with a real-time PCR test,” said Wiku.
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EGI ADYATAMA