This afternoon (March 15), the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council held a press conference. At the meeting, Li Jinming, deputy director of the National Health Commission’s Clinical Testing Center, introduced that the sensitivity of antigen detection reagents approved by the state is between 75% and 98%, and the specificity is between 95% and 99%.
Because my country’s epidemic prevention and control measures are relatively good, the prevalence rate of the population in most areas is less than one in a million. If a city with a population does screening, it will get 300,000 positives, but only 9 of the 300,000 positives are true, which means that most of them are false positives. Of course, the results of negative tests are reliable. If a kit with 85% sensitivity and 97% specificity is used in a population with a prevalence rate of 5%, about 60 out of 100 positives are true, and no more than 1% are missed. Therefore, antigen detection should be used in high-risk, high-prevalence clusters of infections. The general population should not do antigen testing at will.
Editor in charge: Shi Jian | Reviewer: Li Zhen | Director: Wan Junwei