FEATURE: Ricky Chiu Estimates that Rapid Testing can Find Half of the Positive Patients

The government had earlier called on the entire population to conduct rapid antigen tests for three consecutive days. During this period, the Centre for Health Protection received more than 2,800 rapid test reports. Zhao Yantao, an adjunct associate professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences of the Chinese University of China, said that the measures have achieved good results. It was found that 65% of the cases were asymptomatic infections, which shows that the measures can identify invisible patients with high viral loads. However, he pointed out that the number of positive reports this time was lower than expected, which may be due to the positive development of the epidemic, which may also reflect the low proportion of citizens who responded to self-testing.

Zhao Yantao also said that the biggest flaw of this rapid nationwide test is that there are no negative cases, and it would be ideal if negative cases were added. He believes that the rapid test for the whole people can be implemented again. He also agrees that students should take the rapid test every day after the resumption of classes. He believes that when the society gradually "coexists with the virus", the rapid test is a useful method, and parents should encourage their children to take sampling tests.