Stores restocking Covid self-tests, but accuracy comes into question again

On Friday, the Centraal Bureau Drogisterijbedrijven (CBD) announced that millions of coronavirus self-tests are on the way, according to NU.nl. Meanwhile, the UMC Utrecht questioned the reliability of self-test for people not displaying symptoms.

Self-test sales spiked after the Cabinet advised during the November 26 to self-test before Sinterklaas celebrations. In drugstores across the country, self-tests sold out. "If we compare the daily revenue with last wee then, we are already a few dozens of percentages over," a CBD spokesperson told NU.nl.

The CBS said the shelves would be restocked on Friday and Saturday.

On Thursday, the Cabinet stated for people with mild symptoms, a self-test, instead of a GGD test, is sufficient to ease the pressure on testing sites. Yet, research by the UMC Utrecht showed that nasal self-test provides faulty results for people with little or no symptoms. Salvia self-test proved to be inaccurate also for people with complaints. "The nasal self-test is not sufficiently reliable in people without complaints. The saliva self-test examined is not trustworthy, regardless of whether one has complaints or not," epidemiologist Carl Moons said.

The nasal self-test detected the coronavirus in only around four out of ten people without symptoms. When people did show symptoms, the nasal self-test was 90 percent reliable.

A saliva self-test was 57 percent reliable for people with symptoms and 39 percent for people without complaints.