China’s new Covid-19 epicentre Jilin province will incorporate rapid antigen tests (RATs) into its mass testing campaign after the country approved more test kits in a bid to curb the Omicron variant.
Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, who has been leading the fight against the virus, told officials in the province to roll out RATs in schools and test 20 per cent of students every day to detect the virus early, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Wednesday.
“The virus is still circulating at a high level in Jilin province and community spread has yet to be stopped. [The province] should organise mass testing and carry out nucleic acid testing and RATs,” said Sun during a four-day visit to the province that ended on Wednesday.
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China approved 12 RAT products for Covid-19 this month as the country races to stop the spread of the Omicron variant severely challenging the zero-Covid defences it has had in place since 2020.
“We will arrange mass testing and decide where to carry out nucleic acid tests and where to use RATs,” Zhang Li, deputy director of the Jilin provincial health commission, said on Thursday.
He said RATs had been distributed to universities in the province, with 150,000 kits delivered to institutions in Jilin City and 30,000 to universities in Siping.
In a break with the past policy of carrying out only nucleic acid tests to confirm infections, the National Health Commission has authorised the use of RATs by the public “to optimise detection” of the coronavirus.
RATs pick up the protein of the virus without amplification and are therefore believed to be less accurate than nucleic acid tests. Until now, China had shunned the use of the tests in the pandemic, even though they have been widely deployed in the West. This is the first time RATs have been made commercially available in China.
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Li Jinming, deputy director of the NHC’s Clinical Testing Centre, has said nucleic acid tests remain the main means of identifying Covid-19 infections, but RATs should play a complementary role.
Nationwide, the country reported more than 2,400 local infections on Thursday – 1,226 people with symptoms and 1,206 without – compared to around 3,000 cases the day before.
The cases were found across the country but most were in the northeastern province of Jilin. It recorded 742 locally transmitted cases and 415 asymptomatic infections, making up nearly half the national total.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Chinese watchdog warns it’s on the lookout for fake Covid-19 RAT kits
- Europe hit by Covid-19 resurgence after rushed exit, rise of ‘stealth Omicron’
- Covid-19: China points to Omicron and high vaccination rates for rising asymptomatic infections
- Chinese city of Shenzhen adapts to ‘slow life’ during Covid-19 lockdown
- Chinese Covid-19 lockdowns: Jilin residents vent anger over food shortages
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