The test, which produced positive results in 5 minutes and negative results in 13 minutes, was compared to those of another slower machine.
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Un rapid test of the new coronavirus designed by Abbott laboratories, praised by Donald Trump and used every day in the White House, produces between a third and a half of false negative results, according to a preliminary study carried out by university researchers from New York (NYU).
Result after 5 minutes
The test, which produced positive results in 5 minutes and negative results in 13 minutes, was compared to those of another slower machine.
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When the rapid test specimen was diluted in a culture medium (a transport liquid), it missed a third of the samples confirmed positive by the other machine. This rate rose to 48% when the cotton swab remained dry, which is the method recommended by Abbott.
The researchers pre-published their comparison on the public website biorxiv.org, where thousands of researchers are putting their studies online while awaiting review by a scientific journal.
This high rate of false negatives “makes this technology unacceptable in our clinical environment”, conclude the authors.
Trump presents the machine
On March 30, the President himself presented Abbott’s machine, which weighs about 3 kg and is the size of a toaster, to the White House.
An Abbott spokesperson responded that the results were “not consistent” with those of other studies, and stated that “the rate of false negatives reported to Abbott was 0.02%”, without further details . “It is not known whether the samples were tested properly in this study,” added the spokesperson.
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