The Covid-19 pandemic is unrelenting and remains an ever-present risk to the resumption of in-person activity across the world. Non-pharmaceutical measures and vaccines remain the only effective tools against coronavirus.
The economy is yet to open fully because for the most part we do not know our Covid-19 status. The idea behind isolation or social distancing is because we assume the other person or ourselves could be contagious.
Talk to business owners, especially in the hospitality sector. They are hurting. Tens of thousands of employees are yet to return to work and many others took a pay cut. Moreover, some employers have not resumed full-time attendance for their employees.
Productivity has plummeted as the pandemic rages on. Employees have burnt out, especially because they are unable to set a healthy boundary between work and life at home. A recent study revealed that people tended to be more productive on rote or routine work but less on work that was complex or requiring problem solving.
Workplaces and businesses such as restaurants can reopen fully, thanks to the promise of rapid at-home Covid-19 tests. These rapid tests detect small viral proteins called antigens. The tests require rubbing a shallow nasal swab inside one’s nostrils then exposing the swab to a few drops of chemicals. They provide results in just 15 minutes.
Polymerase Chain Reaction tests detect even minute traces of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Rapid antigen tests, which do not amplify the virus, are less sensitive than PCR tests during the early phases of infection, before the virus has replicated wildly, and could return a false negative. Some at-home antigen tests have an overall sensitivity of about 85 per cent, hence catching 85 per cent of people who are infected.
At-home antigen tests are excellent at flagging people who have high viral loads and are more likely to be transmitting the virus to others. Research shows that the rapid antigen tests are very accurate and correlate very well with PCR when people are most infectious.
Rapid testing is now becoming commonplace in many countries. For example, Israeli families test their children using free at-home antigen tests before they attend school. Germans can buy a rapid antigen test at the local grocery store for about Sh130. In Singapore, rapid tests are distributed for free from vending machines.
But rapid tests are not a medical tool. They are an effective public health tool and a critical arsenal in the fight against Covid-19, along with non-pharmaceutical measures and vaccination. Policymakers now recognise the rapid tests could slow the rate of spread of Covid-19, arresting chains of transmission, which often burgeon into clusters of intense, out of control disease spread.
As we accelerate the pace of vaccination Kenya, and Africa at large, must encourage and provide free rapid testing as a veritable compliment to vaccination and other Covid-19 preventative measures. By embracing rapid testing alongside vaccination and public health measures, the economy can reopen fully, our children can stay in school and we can live with the virus.
The views expressed are the writer’s
