Senator Seidman: No, I don’t think this bill can deal with sensitivity and specificity issues. Those are the characteristics and features of the tests that are being used in North America and probably all over the world. In fact, the tests are very highly sensitive and very specific. I did give you the data of the most common tests. Seven of them are being used most commonly in this country, and their sensitivity and specificity are pretty impressive.

I’m going to now go back to my notes, if you want the absolute numbers. These numbers were determined from the U.K. COVID-19 lateral flow oversight team. They analyzed 64 antigen tests. They published May 2021, and they showed that these tests really had very promising performance characteristics. As I said, these are the characteristics of the tests, so there’s nothing you can do to change that. It is what it is. But the most popular — the best seven and most reliable — showed, and here are the numbers for you, that the likelihood that an infectious individual tests positive ranged from 96% to 99%. For one of the tests — one of the seven — the likelihood was 94%. The probability of a false positive result was less than 1%, so you understand that it’s highly unlikely you get a false positive result.

Even more important is that the probability of an infectious person getting a false negative result is very low — 1% to 4%. That means, again, that the tests are sensitive and the tests are specific.

I hope that answers your question.

[Translation]

Senator Seidman: To some extent, I think you’re right that we are concerned about the ability of the federal government to procure the tests — that is to get the tests from the manufacturers — and then distribute them to the provinces. However, it is clear that they do have a website — and I’m just looking now so I can be really clear — that specifies the number of rapid antigen tests that have been distributed to their final point-of-care settings and administered to patients. The unfortunate part is that aspect of their website hasn’t been updated since December 31.

There is clearly a way they have to track the final arrival of these tests at point-of-care settings in the provinces. If they do, they can be transparent and accountable for that.

[Translation]