October 18, 2020 – St. Catherine’s Specialty Hospital is the first in Croatia to provide quick testing for COVID-19, which gives results in 15 to 30 minutes.
HRTurizam reports that the SARS-CoV-2 antigen test is an extremely valuable diagnostic test with high specificity (99.68%) and enters the family of tests performed in direct contact with the patient and for which results are obtained shortly after testing.
What is crucial and a game-changer, especially for the entire tourism sector, is that test results are obtained within 15 to 30 minutes.
Jadranka Primorac, St. Catherine’s Specialty Hospital: Rapid testing was done to relieve the entire health system
Due to the high pressure on the entire health system, rapid testing that gives results in 30 minutes or less, depending on the number of simultaneous tests and the number of professional staff, will improve the overall situation and the pressure on health facilities.
“Rapid testing was done with this goal in mind, for emergency diagnosis and triage to relieve the entire health system, it is also suitable for people who have been in contact with an infected person or have clinical symptoms. It is a test of the pharmaceutical company Roche, which put the test on the market at the end of September,” points out Jadranka Primorac, member of the Management Board, and adds that testing is also good for quickly testing tourists at airports.
The test price is 350 kuna, and Primorac adds that a quick COVID-19 test is done at St. Catherine’s in Zagreb, in a separate unit, following all security protocols.
“We are also provided with access to the National Database so that in case of a positive test, we can enter all positive patients in the SARS-CoV-2 database,” emphasizes Jadranka Primorac.
When we talk about the tourism sector, fast testing is certainly suitable for airports and all passengers who want to get tested quickly and have a negative test, which is an obligation to enter most countries.
The St. Catherine’s points out that the prices of the tests are 350 kuna, and for all inquiries about the tests, you can contact them HERE.
By the way, this is a product of the pharmaceutical company Roche, the Elecsys® SARS-CoV-2 Antigen test, which according to official information from the Roche website, is a very accurate laboratory immunological test for in vitro qualitative detection of the nucleocapsid antigen SARS-CoV-2.
“We are aware that governments and health systems are under great pressure to increase the ability to test for SARS-CoV-2 to manage the spread of the virus effectively. The high-volume antigen test is a valuable addition to the portfolio to help diagnose SARS-CoV-2. The ability to quickly and correctly determine if someone has SARS-CoV-2 is crucial to inform patient management decisions and to combat the spread of COVID-19. Roche remains committed to supporting governments, healthcare professionals, and patients in the fight against this pandemic with the help of our diagnostic solutions,” said Thomas Schinecker, CEO of Roche Diagnostics.
Immunological test Elecsys SARS-CoV-2 Antigen works on all immunochemical analyzers that are widely available worldwide. These fully automated systems can provide test results in about 18 minutes for a single test (excluding sample collection, transport, and preparation time), with up to 300 tests per hour from a single analyzer. The aforementioned laboratory-automated antigen test allows for reduced costs and errors due to the removal of manual handling, as well as fast turnover and high throughput, according to official Roche information.
Rapid testing is a major challenge for the global recovery of tourism and a key element for air traffic activation.
Regarding the standardization of security protocols and the introduction of contactless thermal camera technology at airports, final negotiations are already underway under the auspices of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and it is a matter of months, if not weeks when they will be agreed. On the other hand, a couple of global companies from the USA and Israel have also released quick tests for COVID-19, and now Roche has joined them.
What is certain is that rapid testing will be made possible globally in the coming months, which is important for the tourism sector.
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