Used until now in people over 15 years of age, antigenic nasal swab tests (including self-tests) are now available to children. This is what the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) has just announced in a press release published on Monday, April 26, 2021. News that could increase the ease and capacity of screening for Covid-19, especially in schools.
Break the chains of contamination, especially in schools
Until now, only for people over the age of 15, antigenic tests on a nasal swab are now authorized in children. Indeed, “ in light of recent modeling work “, The High Authority of Health gave, this Monday April 26, 2021, its green light for the use of antigenic tests and self-tests in the less than 15 years. In a press release published, the health authority explains that these antigenic tests on nasal swabs are “ relevant to breaking the chains of contamination, especially in schools “. It therefore recommends the establishment of “large-scale iterative screening by antigenic nasal self-tests in nursery and primary schools, colleges, high schools and universities, both among students, teachers and staff in contact with students “.
As a reminder, antigenic tests on a nasal sample are intended to be less invasive than on a nasopharyngeal sample and have the advantage of presenting a result in only 15 to 30 min. They are carried out in several forms: in rapid diagnostic tests (RDT), rapid diagnostic orientation tests (TROD) or in the form of self-tests.
HAS recommendations for the use of self-tests in schools
Relying on a group of experts and on models, the HAS announced, in its press release, the optimal conditions for the use of antigenic self-tests on nasal swabs at school. According to her, the self-tests “ must be carried out at least once a week according to the sampling methods most suited to the age, capacities of the child and the local context “. After a first performance under the supervision of a competent adult if necessary, students, high school and college students can thus carry out the self-test independently. For pupils in primary school, the HAS considers that the initially supervised self-sampling is also possible but that it is preferable that the test be done by parents or trained staff.
In addition, the HAS recalls that a positive result must be confirmed by an RT-PCR test, in particular to identify the variant in question and that a negative result does not exclude that the person tested does not carry the virus and that ‘we must therefore continue to respect barrier gestures.
As for the tests on saliva samples, the HAS considers that ” the available data, which are very heterogeneous, do not allow at this stage to show that these tests are sufficiently effective to be recommended “.
