(People’s Daily Health Client) On March 21, the National Medical Insurance Administration issued a notice requiring all provinces to temporarily incorporate antigen detection reagents into the province’s basic medical insurance medical service catalog according to procedures. The relevant expenses incurred by the insured in the designated primary medical institutions shall be paid in accordance with the current regulations of the overall planning area, and the expenses of purchasing testing reagents at the designated retail pharmacies can be paid using personal accounts.
At present, there are 17 new coronavirus antigen detection kits approved by the State Food and Drug Administration, and the People’s Daily Health Client also randomly purchased one of them to demonstrate the correct use of antigen detection kits for netizens method.
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Preparation before self-test
1. Wash hands, use mobile Wash hands with water or hand sanitizer. After cleaning your hands, unpack the antigen test card and place it on a flat, clean place.
2. Understand the testing process. Carefully read the supporting instructions of the antigen self-test reagent and the precautions related to the antigen self-test, check whether the antigen self-test reagent is within the shelf life, and check whether the contents of the nasal swab, sampling tube, test card, etc. are missing or damaged. If the reagent expires or the contents of the reagent are missing or damaged, the detection reagent should be replaced in time.
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Sample collection
1. Age 2-14 years old The examiner should be sampled by another adult. Those over 14 years old can perform nasal swab sampling on their own. The sampling process of the antigen test is very important, and it is necessary to clean up the nose and saliva before the test. Sampling and testing also need to be carried out in a relatively clean environment to avoid environmental contamination of testing reagents and impact on testing accuracy.
2. Carefully unpack the nasal swab and avoid touching the swab head with your hands. Then tilt the head slightly, hold the swab in one hand and stick the tail of the swab into one nostril, and slowly go backward along the bottom of the lower nasal passage for 1-1.5 cm, then stick to the nasal cavity and rotate at least 4 circles (the dwell time is not less than 15 seconds), and then Repeat the same for the other nasal cavity using the same swab.
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It should be noted that the antigen test is the same as the nucleic acid test. The sampling process is also very important. The sampling needs to go to a certain depth, collect the mucosal surface and exfoliated cells, and take the effective part. Insufficient depth or insufficient sampling frequency may affect the accuracy of the results.
Antigen detection
1. According to the instructions of the reagent, put the nasal swab after collecting the sample into the sampling tube immediately, and the swab head should be rotated and mixed in the preservation solution for at least 30 minutes. seconds, and squeeze the swab head at least 5 times by hand across the outer wall of the sampling tube to ensure that the sample is fully eluted in the sampling tube.
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2. Squeeze the liquid from the swab head through the outer wall of the sampling tube by hand , discard the swab. After capping the sampling tube, drop the liquid vertically into the sample hole of the test card.
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3. According to the reagent instructions, wait for a certain period of time to interpret the results. Positive result: Red or purple bands are shown at both “C” and “T”. Negative Result: Red or purple band at “C”, no band at “T”. Invalid result: No red or purple band is displayed at “C”, regardless of whether the band is displayed at “T”. If the result is invalid, you need to take the test strip and test again.
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All tested supplies need to be sealed as soon as possible, if the test result is negative , which can be disposed of as general waste. If the test result is positive, it should be reported to the community in time, and the used sampling tubes, test cards, etc. should be handed over to medical institutions for disposal as medical waste when people are transported.