Top epidemiologist and former Harvard Professor, Michael Mina, has slammed Health Minister Stephen Donnelly for his messaging on antigen testing.
Mina, who is also a immunologist , and an advocate for the use of antigen testing in dealing with the Covid crisis, didn’t hold back on Twitter, describing the Minister for Health’s instructions as “some of the most idiotic messaging I’ve seen this entire pandemic”.
Come on Ireland – seriously? Surely, You can do better,” he added.
This is honestly some of the most idiotic messaging I’ve seen this entire pandemic.
Come on Ireland – seriously?
Surely, You can do better. https://t.co/7KB4Q8pPUa
— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) November 24, 2021
Stephen Donnelly had advised that: “Antigen tests should only be used by those who are asymptomatic. If you have symptoms of COVID-19, do not use an antigen test. Self-isolate and get a PCR test. ”
But Professor Mina strongly, and publicly, disagreed.
“If [you] wake up symptomatic, use a rapid test. If [positive], you have COVID. Done. If [negative] and think you may have COVID, check again later that day with a rapid test, or go get a PCR. “But if you have symptoms COVID, rapid tests will detect vast majority,” he explained.
“This is remarkably just… wrong advice from Ireland’s Minister of Health,” he added.
It’s not the first time Stephen Donnelly has come under fire from Mina regarding antigen testing, which the former Harvard professor argues can be used to stop outbreaks before they begin. “I’ve just been banging the drum about this really simple tool that frankly, could have prevented the outbreaks of last winter,” Mina recently told Bloomberg. “It could have—especially when we had no vaccines—saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Last May, the Minister came under fire in an interview with Newstalk’s veteran presenter, Pat Kenny, about antigen testing, which also caught the eye of Prof Mina at the time.
Gript’s editor wrote at the time that the exchange was remarkable, for a couple of reasons.
https://twitter.com/NewstalkFM/status/1392812766696771586?
“Remarkable firstly, because it is the first time in quite a while that an Irish broadcaster has seriously challenged Irish Government policy on the pandemic to the face of an Irish Government minister. And remarkable, secondly, because of how unprepared Donnelly was, as if he simply wasn’t expecting to be seriously challenged,” John McGuirk wrote.
“Oh Stephen, this is bad. This is propaganda, this is not fact”, says Kenny. And he is right.
The whole point of Antigen tests, after all, is to test for infectivity. Donnelly is correct to say that a negative antigen test does not mean that you do not have covid, but he completely leaves out the most important point, which is that if you get a negative antigen test, you are – almost certainly – not infectious.
Professor Mina responded to the Newstalk post back then by saying: “I feel sorry for Ireland”, he says.
I’m sorry for Ireland. It’s about time that they invite someone who actually can explain to them why they are misinterpreting the Cochran review and all of the science behind rapid tests. We’ve written about it extensively. They are simply wrong on this.
— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) May 13, 2021
As McGuirk wrote: You are not alone doc.
The confusing thing here is that it is genuinely impossible to divine a public health objective to the Government’s messaging on Antigen testing. What is their fear? Presumably, it is that people will misinterpret a negative antigen test result and engage in risky behaviours. But is that not also a risk with PCR testing? After all, PCR testing is not 100% accurate either. There is as much chance of somebody assuming they are fine – and being mistaken about that – after a PCR test as there is after an antigen test.
And what is more: generally speaking, while a negative antigen test does not mean you do not have covid, it does probably mean you are unlikely to transmit it. A PCR test gone wrong, by contrast, could miss somebody who is positive and infectious.
Would the Government’s energies not be more effectively directed, then, towards a PR/advertising campaign informing people about the strengths and weaknesses of antigen tests, and how to use them? They are, by all accounts, flying off the shelves. On this subject, the confidence of the public in the Government’s messaging appears to all but have evaporated. Would it not make more sense, then, to work with the public, rather than against them?
Apparently not. Which is why Professor Mina feels sorry for us. They do not inspire a lot of confidence, at the moment, the Government.