New Thai-made rapid Covid test to slash screening costs

By The Nation

 

Photo credit: Hfocus.org

 

Thailand has developed its first rapid test for Covid-19 that provides results within a day, boosting the country’s fight against the disease.

 

Developed by the Medical Sciences Department, the new tests could cost as little as Bt100 each once commercially produced, compared to Bt300-Bt500 for imported versions.

 

The Thai-made rapid test kits use the immunoaffinity method to read serum samples from plasma and blood from the fingertips, explained Supakit Sirilak, department acting director-general.

 

Once approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the test kits will be used by clinicians to screen people who have had symptoms for more than 15 days.

 

Produced in conjunction with Siam BioScience, they use the real-time RT PCR technique, recognised by the World Health Organisation.

 

Currently, 236 Covid-19 laboratories nationwide are checking more than 20,000 samples per day – 10,000 daily in Bangkok alone.

 

The new test kit is more than 90 per cent accurate, with FDA approval expected to take about one month. The department has a production capacity of 3,000 tests per week but is ready to transfer the technology to commercial producers.

 

The Department of Medical Sciences And Siam BioScience has jointly develop and produce a detection kit for the coronavirus 2019 with Real-time RT-PCR method, supporting rapid and thorough detection of infected people. Build a wealth of health in Thailand. There are sources for producing reagents in the country to provide Thai inspection services as well as support screening for quarantine in neighbouring countries. This makes Thailand has Real-time RT-PCR reagent kit for COVID-19 support throughout the COVID-19 outbreak period, with over 700,000 reagents have been reserved.

 

SARS-CoV-2 antibody rapid test kit is produced in Thailand the first time that has been tested for sensitivity with more than 90% accuracy. The kit is now pending registration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is expected to take about 1 month. if got verified, Department of Medical Sciences will produce to be used in randomized immunization screening for 60,000 Thai people nationwide to summarize of disease prevalence Thailand's COVID-19 situation.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397474

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2020-11-06

 

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This should be fun....

4 minutes ago, snoop1130 said:

SARS-CoV-2 antibody rapid test kit is produced in Thailand the first time that has been tested for sensitivity with more than 90% accuracy

So 9 out of 10 are accurate, so that's 10 in 100 that are potentially wrong...

 

How many thousands of Chinese tourists are TaT on about bringing in on STV with reduced quarantine and in house testing?

 

Interesting times ahead if the CCP allow their subjects to travel...

4 minutes ago, mark131v said:

So 9 out of 10 are accurate, so that's 10 in 100 that are potentially wrong...

 

How many thousands of Chinese tourists are TaT on about bringing in on STV with reduced quarantine and in house testing?

 

Interesting times ahead if the CCP allow their subjects to travel...

Seems to be too slow (results within 1 day) considering there are many tests, with much better accuracy on the market with a result within 15 minutes. 

This country doesn't want positive test results.... so this will not take off.

54 minutes ago, snoop1130 said:

Currently, 236 Covid-19 laboratories nationwide are checking more than 20,000 samples per day – 10,000 daily in Bangkok alone.

Thailand 20,000 per day.

I understand the UK is claiming 500,000 per day.  Are the Thai authorities talking about the same type of testing or am I missing something?

If there are no public tests being conducted then this thread is a waste of time.

Hmm...

We have tests that work in 20 minutes on the spot.

Hmm... 

47 minutes ago, ripstanley said:

If there are no public tests being conducted then this thread is a waste of time.

Not interested in other people's opinions then?

2 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Currently, 236 Covid-19 laboratories nationwide are checking more than 20,000 samples per day – 10,000 daily in Bangkok alone

 

So out of the 20k a day tested nationwide its only returnees in quarantine who test positive, seems very odd if that 20k figure is accurate?

1 minute ago, sapson said:

 

So out of the 20k a day tested nationwide its only returnees in quarantine who test positive, seems very odd if that 20k figure is accurate?

 

Yes strange that, uncanny even still many strange things in Thailand and seems Thai's are immune unless they have been living in dirty foreign countries, most peculiar...

A thoroughly confusing article.  It appears to be about two totally different testing kits, one detecting antibodies against the virus, the other detecting DNA derived from the virus' RNA.

 

As for the "new test kit is more than 90 per cent accurate" this apparently refers to the antibody-detecting kit.  Such a test is inherently inaccurate:  it doesn't detect infection if the body hasn't started to produce antibodies against the virus, and it will continue to test positive after the body has cleared of the virus.

The 90% figure itself is also meaningless.  Figures for false positives and false negatives need to be split out separately.  Suppose you screen a million people, none of whom has the disease, a 10% false positive rate would mean having to quarantine 100,000 people.  Conversely, if you screen a million people in quarantine, all of whom have the disease, a 10% false negative rate would allow 100,000 infected people back into the community to spread the disease.

12 hours ago, scorecard said:

Seems to be too slow (results within 1 day) considering there are many tests, with much better accuracy on the market with a result within 15 minutes. 

 

They would be imported so having a slower test manufactured in Thailand means they don't have to pay those inferior foreigners for them

 

 

 

16 hours ago, fangless said:

17 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Currently, 236 Covid-19 laboratories nationwide are checking more than 20,000 samples per day – 10,000 daily in Bangkok alone.

Thailand 20,000 per day.

I understand the UK is claiming 500,000 per day.  Are the Thai authorities talking about the same type of testing or am I missing something?

Does anyone know who these 20k daily tests are being performed on, other than people in quarantine? Hospital patients with coughs, or random screenings, or...?

As long as nobody can show me any evidence that the so called "virus" was isolated

[like the first Koch Postulate requires !!!] this is all a bunch of scientific nonsense !!!

 

... everybody talks about this "virus" but nobody has ever seen it because it was never isolated ?

 

Prove me wrong if you can !!!

17 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Thailand has developed its first rapid test for Covid-19 that provides results within a day, boosting the country’s fight against the disease.

...

Once approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the test kits will be used by clinicians to screen people who have had symptoms for more than 15 days.

A rapid test to screen people who have had symptoms for more than 15 days?

42 minutes ago, brain150 said:

As long as nobody can show me any evidence that the so called "virus" was isolated

[like the first Koch Postulate requires !!!] this is all a bunch of scientific nonsense !!!

 

You clearly don't understand that the Koch Postulates do not apply to viruses because they are obligate cellular parasites.

25 minutes ago, brain150 said:

As long as nobody can show me any evidence that the so called "virus" was isolated

[like the first Koch Postulate requires !!!] this is all a bunch of scientific nonsense !!!

 

... everybody talks about this "virus" but nobody has ever seen it because it was never isolated ?

 

Prove me wrong if you can !!!

Wait... whoa!  GRAB!  Got it.  Here is a complete covid-19 (SARS2) virus from Nonthaburi, Thailand collected on Jan 29, 2020. Yikes, close to me.

 

thaicovid.txt

 

Open the file in a text editor and read it (CAREFUL, do not let it out).

 

Google its name 'SI200893-NT/2020" for more info.

18 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Thailand has developed its first rapid test for Covid-19 that provides results within a day, boosting the country’s fight against the disease.

It goes like this

At arrivals: when did you last cough 12/24/36 hours ago?

More than 12 welcome.

18 hours ago, Blumpie said:

Hmm...

We have tests that work in 20 minutes on the spot.

Hmm... 

Some are quoted as completed in 15 minutes.

1 hour ago, rabas said:

Here is a complete covid-19 (SARS2) virus from Nonthaburi, Thailand collected on Jan 29, 2020.

 

No, it's not.  The virus is an RNA virus, so the bases are ACUG.  That sequence is of DNA, with bases ACTG.  It may be a sequence of DNA produced by reverse transcription of the RNA virus, but it's not the sequence of the virus.

20 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Once approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the test kits will be used by clinicians to screen people who have had symptoms for more than 15 days.

Doesn't that fall into the category of "Bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted"?

 

And this 90% suck Ces rate is concerning.  Even if they did 1000 people a day that's still 100 people with inaccurate results.

 

And the biggy...it's going to take all day to get the result.'

 

I am not going to breakout that bottle of champagne we have in the cupboard just yet!  ????

2 hours ago, brain150 said:

As long as nobody can show me any evidence that the so called "virus" was isolated

[like the first Koch Postulate requires !!!] this is all a bunch of scientific nonsense !!!

 

... everybody talks about this "virus" but nobody has ever seen it because it was never isolated ?

 

Prove me wrong if you can !!!

What you write is totally true. The covid virus has never been isolated anywhere in the world, they use computer projections to assume what it might look like, but they don't know. The mask donning doomsayers of course won't see any relevance in the fact that no one can prove this virus even exists. ????

28 minutes ago, Oxx said:

No, it's not.  The virus is an RNA virus, so the bases are ACUG.  That sequence is of DNA, with bases ACTG.  It may be a sequence of DNA produced by reverse transcription of the RNA virus, but it's not the sequence of the virus.

Lol, OK, you are pedantically correct.

 

In as much as either set of alphabetical codes are not real bases, they are equally correct representations of the original RNA sequence, this data was downloaded from Genbank.

 

In other words, in 10 or 20 years when kids have USB based genome reassembly kits on their computers, there will likely be an option to select RNA/DNA based encodings.

Rapid tests developed elsewhere deliver a result within 15: minutes. This Thai test, one day, is hardly "rapid" !

On 11/6/2020 at 7:21 PM, mark131v said:

So 9 out of 10 are accurate, so that's 10 in 100 that are potentially wrong...

 

How many thousands of Chinese tourists are TaT on about bringing in on STV with reduced quarantine and in house testing?

 

Interesting times ahead if the CCP allow their subjects to travel...

They are merely couch potatoes. Useless tourists nothing going to assist Thai nationals. Fakes 

On 11/6/2020 at 6:07 AM, fangless said:

Thailand 20,000 per day.

I understand the UK is claiming 500,000 per day.  Are the Thai authorities talking about the same type of testing or am I missing something?

My metro area in USA is testing 100,000 per day. Of course our case numbers are higher because we are testing about 51 times the thai rate per capita.

9 hours ago, khunjeff said:

Does anyone know who these 20k daily tests are being performed on, other than people in quarantine? Hospital patients with coughs, or random screenings, or...?

My guess is mostly those who will be coming in contact with the ruling elites.

This gets interesting. From Skynews on April 1st this year.  "Coronavirus: Thailand trials 15-minute COVID-19 test
If the test is positive the patient is sent for a more comprehensive swab test to confirm the result." So what happened to this test? Went the way of the bomb detectors etc etc

 

Checking ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing website shows that Thailand had a daily testing rate of 0.06 per thousand in October, assuming they have not massively ramped up testing, and whilst I do not like assuming, the dinosaurs in Thailand are pretty predictable. This give a daily testing rate of 60 per million and 4200 for 70million population. Interestingly the labs in Bangkok can handle 10,000 tests per day, hmm where did I see that number recently? So let us not rejoice to much as it looks like someone is fiddling the numbers again. 

 

Cheers

On 11/6/2020 at 6:21 PM, mark131v said:

So 9 out of 10 are accurate, so that's 10 in 100 that are potentially wrong...

That's not exactly right. Sensitivity is only a measure of how accurate positive results are. So what this means is that if you get 100 positive results, ten of those may be false positives.

 

To know the overall accuracy you have to know the specificity rate as well. Specificity measures what percentage of the negative test results are accurate.

 

We don't have the specificity figures for this test so we don't know its overall rate of accuracy.