With questions swirling about how well rapid COVID-19 tests work when it comes to detecting the omicron variant, leading scientists are now reassuring the public that they do work, and have a valuable role to play in the ongoing pandemic.
Among them is Dr. Bruce Tromberg, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the NIH, and the top scientist in charge of Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics. RADx, a new government-funded NIH program, was tasked with rapidly increasing the nation’s testing capacity and studying how tests perform when faced with new variants.
“The tests are an essential component of what we need, especially in the time of very rapidly expanding omicron,” Tromberg said.
While PCR tests are very effective at detecting the presence of even small amounts of virus, rapid tests have become a quick and easy way to determine if a person is contagious. In a Tuesday announcement, the Food and Drug Administration said rapid tests do detect the omicron variant, but in a laboratory setting they did not perform as well as they have with earlier variants.
The FDA announcement, described by one expert as a kind of curveball, lacked specific numbers and sparked confusion and dismay among some experts and Americans who have been using rapid tests to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 to loved ones over the holidays.
Dr. Michael Mina, a vocal advocate for increased rapid testing use and the chief science officer for eMed, told ABC News, “There is no reason and no data to support that the tests are less able to detect omicron virus.”
News from the FDA about rapid tests’ ability to detect omicron comes on the heels of the Biden Administration’s announcement that the U.S. will have 500 million at-home rapid tests available starting January.
But Tromberg said Americans should “absolutely not” be discouraged from using rapid tests based on this FDA announcement, which was based on preliminary laboratory studies on live virus samples combined from multiple patients and run on a relatively small number of rapid test brands.
Those tests showed a potential dip in effectiveness, but, “It’s not like they fell off the map,” he said. The FDA also said more clinical studies are needed.
Preliminary studies conducted in a lab can offer clues, but are not as reliable as real-world studies done on real people. Those real-world clinical studies are currently being conducted, and results should be available shortly, Tromberg said.
He expects clinical studies to show the tests are…
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