If the test is positive the patient is sent for a more comprehensive swab test to confirm the result.
Although it does not replace the need for laboratory testing of COVID-19, there is hope that the test kit will help reduce the large number of patients who need to go to the hospital for examination.
"We don't want to replace the PCR test but we want to add some screening tests to help the government to decrease the amount of workload who come to have the PCR test by using our rapid test,"Professor Narin Hiransuthikul, vice president of Chulalongkorn University told Sky News. "If the rapid test is accurate enough we would like to expand this kind of test to all the provinces in Thailand."Patients who get positive results are sent for a follow-up PCR test, those who are negative are told to self-quarantine for 14 days.
In recent trials the test had a 5% margin of error, so negative patients are retested after a few days to confirm the reading. Some 50 patients can be seen each day at the facility in Bangkok where chairs are meticulously separated to enforce social distancing.
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