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| People perform rapid antigen tests at a COVID-19 screening center in the southwestern city of Gwangju, Thursday. Yonhap |
By Lee Hyo-jin
The accuracy of COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits has been thrown into doubt as an increasing number of people are seeing false negatives after using the self-testing kits.
The low accuracy of rapid tests is raising concerns, as asymptomatic patients who have tested negative with the tests may be spreading the virus unwittingly, fueling the record-breaking spread of infections.
Under the new testing scheme implemented on Feb. 3, the highly accurate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are now only available to high-risk groups aged 60 and above, people who have come into close contact with a COVID-19 case or people with a doctor's note citing the need for the lab-based test.
Others can take the PCR test only after they have tested positive on the rapid antigen test.
According to the Korean Society of Diagnostic Laboratory Medicine, the sensitivity of rapid tests was found to be less than 50 percent when performed by medical personnel, and less than 20 percent when performed by the general public.
Studies have shown that rapid tests may fail to detect Omicron cases in the first days of infection.
While the government expects that the wide use of self-testing kits is inevitable due to Omicron ― which has almost overwhelmed the country's ability to conduct PCR testing on a large scale ― experts pointed out that the government should have put more effort in ramping up testing capacity in advance.
"We have urged the authorities to scale up resources for PCR tests during the last two years, as these tests would be necessary in pandemic situations other than the coronavirus," Lee Hyuk-min, a professor of laboratory medicine at Yonsei University was quoted as saying by local daily The Kyunghyang Shinmun.
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