Comparison of the i-test COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test with Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase PCR

Abstract

Objective: Improvements in SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis with easy, rapid and cost-effective approaches are required to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Antigen tests result in 5 to 30 minutes, providing an advantage over polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in duration. We tested the performance of the i-test COVID-19 rapid antigen test to real-time reverse transcriptase PCR in 200 symptomatic COVID-19 suspected patients. The cycle threshold (Ct) values of the patients were found to be between 21.6 and 34.4. The Ct value of 10 patients who tested positive in the PCR test was >30. We found that the sensitivity and specificity of the antigen test were 80.6 % and 93.7 %, respectively, for samples with a Ct value of <30, and overall agreement between antigen and PCR test was 91.6 % for these samples. i-test COVID-19 rapid antigen test can be used for screening in schools, factories, nursing homes, and everywhere where PCR test is unavailable.