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What the industry needs - Speed, scale, low cost, accuracy
So what should the industry be looking for when it comes to testing? Tests should meet four key criteria: they should be fast, cheap, accurate and be able to be done at scale.
Speed
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If you are going to administer a test before check-in, you need to get the results back within 30 minutes - ideally less. It’s not realistic to make people wait around for longer (and you run into problems with waiting space). Even Bangkok’s ‘fast’ test takes 90 minutes.
Cost
The €59 standard test at Frankfurt Airport costs less than other testing solutions, but still represents €236 for a family of four. Especially for leisure travel, it’s too expensive for many. The cost has to be low enough that an airline can easily add it as an extra, without it being off putting.
Accuracy
Emirates tried to introduce a 10 minute test in April, only to have to withdraw it after it was found to be inaccurate. Any test needs to be validated by an independent and reputable third party - a scientific body or a University - and of course accredited by the relevant regulatory authorities such as the FDA or European Medicines Agency.
Capacity
Frankfurt’s 5,000 a day test capacity is impressive - but it still only represents less than a third of people who fly from the airport every day in normal times. Then as we detailed, Hawaii is having problems even getting enough chemicals for testing, due to the Coronavirus spike on the mainland.
As a result, any viable solution has to be available on a mass market scale.
Then there are other issues that need to be overcome. For example, any test should be supervised by airline staff, you can’t have large teams of medical personnel on call at all times.
Finally, it needs to be an antigen, not an antibody test. As the National (UAE) says, there is some confusion between the two, with people at one medical centre in the UAE being given the latter when they thought they were being given the former.
In layperson’s terms, an antibody test says if you have had it (and have a degree of immunity), while an antigen test says if you have got it now.
