COVID-19 Soars, Epidemiologists Ask The Government To Stop GeNose As A Travel Requirement From Airports To Stations

GeNose Tool (Photo: ugm.ac.id)

JAKARTA - A number of epidemiologists have asked the government, particularly the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Transportation, to stop using the GeNose C19 as one of the requirements for public transportation.

Epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia, Pandu Riono, said that GeNose was inappropriate as a screening tool at airports to stations. Pandu also did not recommend that GeNose be used as a COVID-19 screening tool in a number of activities.

Because, he said, there is currently no validation from external parties other than Gadjah Mada University (UGM), the maker of GeNose, which states that the tool has an accuracy of up to 90 percent of the corona virus test.

"Avoid using the GeNose COVID-19 screening tool which is not validated for travellers, meetings, offices, hotel visitors, educational activities such as schools and colleges, sporting events, concerts, and so on," Pandu said when confirmed by VOI, Tuesday, June 22.

An epidemiologist from Australia's Griffith University, Dicky Budiman also admitted that from the start he did not agree if travelers used the GeNose test results as a condition for traveling.

This is because rumors circulated that there were findings of false negative and false positive results from the use of GeNose. Therefore, the accuracy of the GeNose test is doubtful.

The problem is, currently the spread of COVID-19 is mostly caused by people who travel. What Dicky is worried about is that exposure to the corona virus could not be detected because of GeNose's inaccuracy.

"From the beginning I did not see the placement of GeNose as a screening tool in public facilities and it tends to be dangerous, especially with the new variant that is extraordinarily effective in infecting through the air," said Dicky in a short message.

For information, GeNose is a rapid screening tool made by the nation's children whose tests are different from antigen or swab tests. The tests performed with the GeNose are exhalation based.

GeNose is connected to a cloud computing system through an artificial intelligence-based application to get diagnosis results in real time.

GeNose has the advantage that it can detect it faster and the price is relatively cheaper, starting from Rp. 20 thousand. It is said that the accuracy for detecting COVID-19 using GeNose is above 90 percent.

Later, the patient's exhalation sample taken using GeNose, if the result is positive, must still be validated using the standard PCR test swab test.