New Zealand needs to be "faster and agile to new testing approaches", so it is a "fantastic advantage" to have rapid antigen tests being trialled, University of Otago professor and infectious diseases expert David Murdoch says.
His comments come after the Government announced it would be trialling rapid antigen tests in workplaces .
The announcement came as a report by the Covid Technical Advisory Group , chaired by Murdoch, said there had been a "relative slowness" in introducing saliva testing and readying itself for rapid antigen testing.
The advisory group recommended the Ministry of Health urgently create a separate group to focus on innovation in the Covid-19 testing space in New Zealand, and that this group partner with Māori, Pasifika, disability, rural, business, and other community groups.
Murdoch told Breakfast New Zealand was "pretty good" when it came to testing and the country had "done well so far with PCR" testing amid its elimination strategy.
"I really need to underscore that."
However, he felt saliva testing could have been adopted earlier and rapid antigen tests "could have got here faster".
University of Otago professor David Murdoch says rapid antigen tests will "hopefully put us in a better place to be more agile". (Source: Other)
They were a "fantastic advantage to have".
Rapid antigen testing tends to be less sensitive than the PCR method when detecting Covid-19 cases, but what it lacks in sensitivity it makes up for in speed.
As the process doesn’t require samples to be sent to a lab, it can be done in as little as 15 minutes.
"This will hopefully put us in a better place to be more agile," Murdoch said.
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