Dr Thomas Hottier recalls that self-tests are less effective than nasopharyngeal PCRs in detecting whether one is positive for Covid-19, all the more so for the Omicron variant, whose viral load is very low.
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“We need education in the sensitivity of tests” faced with the Omicron variant, estimates Sunday January 9 on franceinfo Dr. Thomas Hottier, medical biologist and general manager of the group of laboratories Inovie, which performs approximately 70,000 tests per day at the moment. According to Thomas Hottier, all the tests are not equal in terms of reliability, and we must not relax the barrier gestures after a self-test or an antigen.
For this medical biologist, “the performance of the self-test kits must be evaluated”, considered to be less sensitive to the Omicron variant. “You should know that on the self-tests, we will identify 1 in 2 asymptomatic people who are positive” , he explains. “On the saliva samples in PCR, we are at 90% reliability and on conventional, nasopharyngeal PCRs, we are at 100%. So you have to test with the right tests at the right time of the epidemic.”
Thomas Hottier recommends, for example, to complete the self-test protocol on D-0, D-2 and D-4 with a PCR test, “which is also recommended by the High Authority for Health”, he specifies, because “Omicron’s viral load is very low”. In addition, the biologist also considers that the indications for PCR saliva tests should be broadened, which do not require going to the laboratory for the sample: “Currently they are made in 20% of cases for schoolchildren, but that would make it possible to go much faster and to have a much stronger sensitivity than with antigens.”
Thomas Hottier also ensures that “despite tensions” on Covid-19 tests, there is no risk of a shortage: “Since the beginning of 2020, we have improved, some suppliers produce in France and we have increased our production capacities by more than 5 times over the entire fleet of French laboratories.”