Rapid antigen test in the context of "Point-of-care testing"

The COVID-19 pandemic in Romania, a part of the worldwide pandemic, began on 26 February 2020 when the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Romania was confirmed in Gorj County was confirmed.

As of 31 January 2022, the National Institute of Public Health reported around 2,200,000 cases, 1,800,000 recoveries, and 60,000 COVID-19-related deaths. More than 11.7 million RT-PCR tests and more than 7.3 million rapid antigen tests were processed.

Malaria antigen detection tests are a group of commercially available rapid diagnostic tests of the rapid antigen test type that allow quick diagnosis of malaria by people who are not otherwise skilled in traditional laboratory techniques for diagnosing malaria or in situations where such equipment is not available. There are currently over 20 such tests commercially available (WHO product testing 2008). The first malaria antigen suitable as target for such a test was a soluble glycolytic enzyme Glutamate dehydrogenase.None of the rapid tests are currently as sensitive as a thick blood film, nor as cheap. A major drawback in the use of all current dipstick methods is that the result is essentially qualitative. In many endemic areas of tropical Africa, however, the quantitative assessment of parasitaemia is important, as a large percentage of the population will test positive in any qualitative assay.

Viral culture is a laboratory technique in which samples of a virus are placed to different cell lines which the virus being tested for its ability to infect. If the cells show changes, known as cytopathic effects, then the culture is positive.

Traditional viral culture has been generally superseded by shell vial culture, in which the sample is centrifuged onto a single layer of cells and viral growth is measured by antigen detection methods. This greatly reduces the time to detection for slow growing viruses such as cytomegalovirus, for which the method was developed. In addition, the centrifugation step in shell vial culture enhances the sensitivity of this method because after centrifugation, the viral particles of the sample are in close proximity to the cells.