The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, accused that with lies the federal undersecretary of health Hugo López-Gatell intends to disqualify his idea that it is relevant to apply “rapid tests” at a massive level in his state and in the rest of the country, in the fight against the contagions of COVID-19 disease.
In a video on April 2, Alfaro claimed Lopez-Gatell because at his conference last Wednesday he said that rapid testing is not useful for fighting coronavirus, and that he had also confirmed that none of them are endorsed by health agencies, or in Germany, Canada or the United States.
“Mystery solved, no useful quick evidence right now”Lopez-Gatell said.
Alfaro, in the video, assured you that’s false.
He noted that the US FDA had approved at least four “rapid tests,” one of them immunological or antibody-detected, and at least three that work with the PCR or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, which detect the virus’s genetic material.
The governor even showed captures observing FDA authorization for four methods that seek to assist in the detection of COVID-19.
A review of the FDA page, in effect, observes authorization for emergency use and in authorized laboratories in the United States of the methods mentioned by Alfaro.
However, the governor of Jalisco and López-Gatell differ in what they see as “quick tests” for detecting COVID-19.
Lopez-Gatell mentioned that rapid tests, which he thinks are unusitiesy, work with pregnancy-like test strips, in which a drop of blood is put and a result is obtained within 10 to 15 minutes, without the need to transfer the sample to a laboratory.
These tests detect antibodies, the immune system’s reaction to coronavirus.
The problem with them, López-Gatell said, is that it is not known in what number of days from infection the antibodies or defenses of the organism are detected.
In Spain, according to a newspaper report The Country, the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (Seimc) detected that thousands of rapid tests that arrived from China only detect antibodies against coronavirus from the fifth or sixth day of infection.
These tests, according to Lopez-Gatell, are equivalent to blowing a fly, which still gives an adequate result or a dangerous false negative.
On the other hand, Lopez-Gatell has not disqualified detection methods like the one presented by US President Donald Trump. It is a portable device that according to your production company yields a positive result in 5 minutes and a negative one in 13.
It doesn’t take up to 4 hours, which is what is so far taken by ‘traditional’ or more common analysis, in laboratories like the InDRE from which they get a sample.
The ID NOW test (from the Abbott Diagnostics Scarborough company) presented by Trump, unlike those that detect antibodies, identifies the genetic material or RNA of COVID-19 in a person. It is the PCR test or polymerase chain reaction.
It takes a sample of the respiratory secretion of the potential coVID-19 infected.
PCR is the standard technique, recommended by WHO, Said López-Gatell, and is the same technique that has been applied so far in Mexico, although a device like ID NOW promises to drastically reduce the time to output results.
“Technological innovation has found ways to use this PCR test that are faster or possibly faster than traditionally tested, i.e. there is increasing technological innovation,” he said.
At yesterday's briefing, President Trump took Abbott's new rapid virus test out of the box. He displayed it upside down and left it on a table. Today's briefing is about to begin. pic.twitter.com/7yNS2UZm1R
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 31, 2020
To that kind of method, like the one presented by Trump, Alfaro considers it a quick test. On the other hand, López Gatell says that the diagnostic product ID NOW cannot be called that. That’s a difference in concepts that both civil servants have.
“The United States and the president of this nation himself has made a public presentation of a product called rapid test. Don’t confuse, what he present… it is a product that is technologically identical in terms of the test mechanism, it is the chain reaction of polymerase, which is the diagnostic standard used by Mexico used by most countries and recommended by WHO.
It’s not a quick test”Lopez Gatell insisted on April 1.
So far the official has not mentioned whether Federal Health contemplates acquiring or attempting to purchase diagnostic systems such as the ID NOW, presented by Trump.
Is there or isn’t there a US-approved quick test?
Back to The Video of Alfaro, in it the governor accused that Lopez-Gatell lied noting that there was no rapid or immunological evidence – of which antibodies detect – authorized by health agencies internationally.
The governor showed the FDA page, where the qSARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM Rapid Test of the company qSARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM Rapid Test is approved for antibodies.
However, your FDA approval for emergency use in the United States occurred on April 1, without it being possible to pinpoint whether this was before or after Lopez-Gatell checked with the U.S. agency whether they had approved such a method.
Beyond the times, and that Lopez-Gatell considers them useful or not, the truth is that The US FDA has already passed a quick test that works with antibody detection.
The other method mentioned by Alfaro, the ID NOW, was approved by the FDA on March 27, but as already mentioned, that Product Lopez-Gatell does not consider it as “quick test”.
A third, Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2 test that offers to give results in 45 minutes, was approved by the FDA on March 20. Alfaro has asked that it be applied in Mexico, that it obtain the permits of Cofepris. So far Federal Health has not ruled on whether there would be an attempt to purchase this product, which would speed up the diagnoses.
It also claims for the amount of evidence
The governor of Jalisco accused the mexican that very little COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Mexico, compared to countries such as South Korea, so he asked López-Gatell to explain what needs to be done, to have more diagnoses and isolate people with the disease, and thus prevent more contagion. Even accepting that antibody tests are only a first step, and that PCR diagnoses would then have to be confirmed.
“Tell us which (test), tell us how, tell us what to do”, the state representative said, who in the previous few days assured that a supplier had failed him to deliver hundreds of “quick tests”, so the purchase was no longer completed.
On the amount of evidence, Lopez-Gatell said: “The number of tests that are done depends on the number of suspected cases that are identified, i.e., there’s no plan to say: I’m going to do so many tests a day. If there are more cases in a day, more tests are done.
So far, the number we’ve just seen, we’ve done about 14 thousand tests since before the first case arrived, precisely with the expectation that we could find cases and then to follow up on the cases.
How many more are we going to do? All that are needed, all that are needed to monitor, to monitor the course of the epidemic.”
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