Interior Health in the Canadian province of British Columbia announced it is discontinuing rapid antigen tests for diagnosing Covid-19 in its facilities, but social media posts claiming this proves the tests do not work are misleading. The health authority and physicians say that while false negatives can occur, the tests provide generally accurate positive results.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Interior Health January 08, 2021 - 10:13 AM Hospital laboratories in Kamloops and Kelowna are operating with new equipment that has nearly doubled their ability to process COVID-19 testing samples. New pieces of equipment led to a massive increase in the number of COVID-19 tests that are able to be processed at Kelowna General Hospital and Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, according to an Interior Health press release issued yesterday, Jan. 7. The new Panther fusion instruments, laboratory machines that have increased the capacity for each hospital to perform testing on COVID-19 samples, have increased the health authority s ability to process samples from about 900 in a day to more than 1,600, according to Interior Health.