Sir, – The role of antigen testing continues to be misrepresented in the media and frequently by those who should, by virtue of their qualifications, know better.
As Prof Luke O’Neill and others have repeatedly clarified; if you want to reliably know if you have Covid-19, at any stage in the disease, then get a PCR test.
If you simply want to know if you are contagious with Covid, then antigen testing is best, with, I believe, 99 per cent accuracy. This is why it is so effective in screening before events or other close engagements with people. A friend wisely suggested to me recently that it might make sense to start calling it a “Covid Contagion Test” rather than an antigen test to better clarify its role.
– Yours, etc,
JOHN GRIFFIN,
Bloomsbury,
Kells, Co Meath.