Staff scientists at the UHAS Covid-19 Testing Centre underwent a day’s training on January 28 to prepare them to begin conducting antigen and antibody testing at the Centre. UHAS is among a select number of testing facilities that have received some of the antigen and antibody tests to evaluate in this exercise meant to test the efficacy of the two tests.

The antigen test rapidly determines if someone has an active infection while the antibody test detects whether a person has been previously exposed to the virus. Upon approval from the Food and Drugs Authority, the two tests will be fully deployed at the UHAS Covid-19 Testing Centre to augment the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test currently deployed at the Centre.

Professor William Kwabena Ampofo (second from right) led the team that included Dr. Fenteng Danso (far left) and Dr. Maxwell Antwi (right) from the National Laboratory Network for Covid-19, which took UHAS staff through practical sessions on the rudiments of the two tests. Prof. Ampofo praised the work being done at the Centre and urged the staff to persist and ensure that safety standards are adhered to at all times. He also stated that as a result of its good work, the UHAS COVID-19 Testing Centre is benefiting from two new PCR Testing Machines supplied by the Ministry of Health in January 2021.

Dr. Kwabena Duedu (third from right), Head of the UHAS COVID-19 Testing Centre, said the PCR test remains the golden standard that these additional tests would augment in patient management: “These tests will help facilitate rapid decision making on the status and management of critically ill patients.”