The National Directorate of Medicines endorsed the previous Sunday for the import and sale of these tests. They are a cheaper option in addition to the PCR-RT exams.
Pharmaceutical companies already have the endorsement to import and market antigen tests to detect COVID-19, as announced last Sunday by the National Directorate of Medicines (DNM), under the Ministry of Health.
The DNM has explained in a statement, made public on its social networks, that it carried out “the corresponding technical assessments” for this type of examination.
Related topic: Government plans to accept antigen testing to enter El Salvador by air, what does that mean?
Antigen testing, also called rapid, requires a nasopharyngeal swab sample from people. This sample is then placed in a test, similar to a pregnancy test, and according to the chemical reaction in this test, the person knows if there are traces of antibodies in their body that their body generated in the presence of viruses.
However, this test does not accurately indicate whether or not the virus remains active in the person. For a real-time result, a PCR-RT test would always be required.
The price of these antigen tests has not been determined by the DNM, nor which brands or manufacturers meet the quality standards. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by El Diari d’Avui, and although these tests did not yet have this health authorization, there are already several private laboratories offering this service, which is around $ 70 to $ 100.
Low-cost rapid tests would be of great help to front-line staff or other workers who are required to take a test that indicates they are negative, said in August 2020 epidemiologist Ricardo Lara. Photo EDH / file
In the case of Costa Rica they cost about $ 60, and $ 40 in Guatemala, according to information on the internet from laboratories that offer them.
The advantage of this type of test is that the answer is 20 to 45 minutes in fact the sieving.
Rapid tests have been an option for citizens of several countries worldwide for months, such as the United States, Mexico and Guatemala, to mention upcoming cases.
In El Salvador, DNM inspectors withdrew such tests from the market that they found in two pharmaceutical sales on November 26, 2020.
The position of the institution has changed, because in August 2020, the newly appointed National Director of Medicines, Noé Geovanni García, stated that this institution had not authorized such rapid tests for COVID-19, because the same “do not guarantee reliable results”.
As a background, according to a statement from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this entity distributed hundreds of thousands of rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 and measured its effectiveness in four Latin American countries: El Salvador ( 40,000), Ecuador (80,000), Honduras (40,000) and Suriname (30,000).