Denialism, a movement by which one is totally contrary to an idea conceived by the general public, has never ceased to amaze since the beginning of the pandemic. From the creation of SARS-CoV-2 itself to the operation of the different instruments that have emerged in the fight against the coronavirus, the last focus of rejection has arisen against antigen tests. Some tests that are easy to do and that have a very simple mechanism, by which in almost all cases a result is given according to the situation of a person.
A series of videos has traveled the social networks in recent months, as a result of the increase in demand for antigen tests for self-diagnosis. The tests that can and that anyone can do at home, against which the deniers have come out in a storm to deny their usefulness.
Either by applying orange juice or water or completely opening a kit to see what it’s like inside, in this last test it is enough to see its interior to know how it works. And it is that the antigen tests consist of a simple strip inserted in a small plastic package, but it works with a true result.
As if it were a television, when opening an antigen test it may seem that your device is useless. However, this works like any other self-test, for example pregnancy, and applies science based on a simple strip.
This is how an antigen test works
A reactive strip on which a small amount of drops of a collected sample must be placed (smear from the inside of the nose or throat, since the great part of the viral load is found there). Once the sample is applied, the principle of chromatography separates the sample components based on how they react as they pass through the film.
In this way, once they pass through the ‘T’ (test) or ‘C’ (control) signals, which are gold nanoparticles, they change color, being reflected according to their interaction. Especially on the first letter, since as it contains a load of antibodies, if these react with the person’s antigens (they must have them, otherwise the virus is not present) the signal is marked. If this does not happen, the sample advances without interacting with this mark until it reaches the second letter, which will always remain fixed.
A simple solution to quickly detect the presence or not of the virus that is always reliable and whose ‘false negative’ or ‘false positive’ responds more to the fact that part of the viral load (probability) has not been taken in the sample or this was already very low. The science that dismantles denial theories but that, yes, if the result is positive, it is recommended to perform a much more reliable PCR to verify such contagion.
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