The National Medicines Directorate approved the previous Sunday for the import and sale of these tests. They are a cheaper option in addition to PCR-RT tests.
Pharmaceutical companies already have approval to import and market antigen tests for COVID-19, according to the National Medicines Directorate (DNM), an agency of the Ministry of Health, it announced last Sunday.
DNM explained in a statement, made public on its social networks, that it performed “appropriate technical assessments” for this type of examination.
Associated topic: The government intends to accept antigen testing to enter El Salvador by air, what does that mean?
Antigen tests, also called rapid tests, require a nasopharyngeal swab test in humans. Then, the said sample is placed in a test, similar to a pregnancy test, and according to the chemical reaction in said test, the person knows if there are traces of antibodies that his body generated in the presence of the virus in his body.
However, this test does not accurately indicate whether or not the virus remains active in person. For a real-time result, an RT-PCR test would always be required.
The price of these antigenic tests was not determined by DNM, nor was it determined which brands or manufacturers meet the quality standards. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by El Diario de Hoy, and despite the fact that these tests did not yet have this health permit, there are already several private laboratories offering this service, which range from $ 70 to $ 100. .
Low-cost rapid tests would be very helpful for front-line staff or other workers who need a test to indicate that they are negative, said epidemiologist Ricardo Lara in August 2020. Photo / file EDH
In the case of Costa Rica, they cost about $ 60 and $ 40 in Guatemala, according to information from the labs that provide them.
The advantage of this type of test is that you have the answer between 20 and 45 minutes, in fact, the screening.
Rapid tests have been an option for citizens of various countries around the world for months, such as the United States, Mexico and Guatemala, to mention close cases.
In El Salvador, DNM inspectors withdrew the tests they found in two sales of pharmaceuticals on November 26, 2020.
The institution’s position has changed, as in August 2020, the newly appointed national director of medicines, Noé Geovanni García, said that the institution did not authorize such rapid tests for COVID-19 because it “does not guarantee reliable results”.
As a background, according to a statement from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this entity has distributed hundreds of thousands of rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 and measures their effectiveness in four Latin American countries: El Salvador (40,000), Ecuador (80,000), Honduras (40,000) and Suriname (30,000).