As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in the world and claiming lives, Rwanda is embarking on carrying out antigen-based tests to diagnose the virus.
During an event in which Africa Medial Supplier donated testing kits for Covid-19 to the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), officials said that the move will help speed up Covid-19 testing as well as reduce related costs.
The company provided 2,500 antigen Covid-19 test kits and 2,500 antibody tests. The kits are worth $50,000 (about Rwf47 million) in monetary value.
Antibody testing checks your blood by looking for antibodies and reveals whether you were infected with the Covid-19 virus in the past and now have antibodies against the virus.
Antigen Covid-19 test kits are considered one of the rapid and easy-to-use devices intended to facilitate testing outside of laboratory settings.
According to Dr. Mwikarago Yvan, Division Manager of the National Reference Laboratory at RBC, the antigen test kits will help provide Covid-19 results within 30 minutes, which is a significant stride as the results have been taking seven to eight hours in the current situation.
