Are the antigen tests like the lateral flow ones?
Tbf I've not logged any of the LF tests I've done in the last few days as they've all been negative. That's just me being lazy like.
All you do is scan a QR mate and then they're logged on the system once you've put whether it's posiitve or negative. It's not that different?
They are exactly the same thing mate. Just different terms to refer to them.
I think the UK were bit behind in the early stages of the pandemic for testing, so the LFT/Antigen testing became a corner stone of their testing programme. They compensated by providing a free LFT/Antigen programme with the test at home kits and count it as an official government test. Its why the UK test numbers like comparatively fairly high in comparison to Germany like Pete said. When really people are using antigen tests/LFT and antigen test all the time, you can get them in vending machines, newsagents, pharmacies, Aldi. Lidel and petrol forecourts - you do your test and throw it away - other governments dont and count as an "official" test. Therefore the UK will always bee higher in terms of testing because they count them.
The difficulty is it skews a lot of stats, for example as Joe was saying yesterday, the UK has a positivity rate of 6% on its test with over 100k cases, Ireland 21% with 5k. That matters as i know if im out over Xmas 1 in five people may be infectious in the community so i make decisions, in the UK that ratio i dont think informs an awful lot, i think the motivation is political - basically saying - we're doing loads of tests, but its not informative and doesn't help to make decisions, seen to be doing.
Dont get me wrong Antigen and LFT have a place, i use them myself, but the context is important in comparing things nationally around Europe.
