The effectiveness of Antigen Test Kits (ATK) for Covid-19 testing has been found to be adequate for self-testing by people at home, the National Health Security Office (NHSO) says.
Secretary-general of the NHSO Jadej Thammatacharee said the NHSO, along with the Public Health Ministry and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, conducted Covid-19 tests using ATK for 50,000 people where it was found that some 10% of the test group were infected.
Dr Jadej said they rechecked the results through Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and found only a 3% discrepancy rate, revealing that ATK has sufficient accuracy.
The kits can be used to allow people to conduct tests on themselves at home, he said.
Dr Jadej said the NHSO is procuring more kits and asking disease control officers to distribute them to the public.
The NHSO is also cooperating with over 200 local clinics, 69 health centres in Bangkok and local hospitals across the country to conduct Covid-19 tests using ATK.
Public Health Ministry spokesman Rungruang Kitpati said a kit can provide a test result within 15 minutes.