Maryland will be purchasing and deploying 250,000 rapid antigen COVID-19 tests within days, Governor Larry Hogan announced at a press conference.

The state is the first of those that signed onto a multi-state compact back in early August (which has since grown to 10 states from its initial 6) to acquire rapid tests, which are able to provide results within 15 to 20 minutes.

Hogan says they will first deploy them in congregate settings like nursing homes, assisted living centers, juvenile detention centers, and correctional facilities in the state. There are also discussions of sending the tests to college campuses and dormitories.

“We are going to get them into utilization as soon as we get the first supply which, I think, is days away,” said Hogan.

The tests that Maryland is acquiring are being manufactured by Becton, Dickinson and Company, which is one of four companies to have received an emergency authorization from the FDA. They have a facility in Baltimore County, which is where the governor made the announcement.

Each test costs roughly $30, said Hogan, which works out to an initial purchase of $7.5 million. That cost is covered by a CDC grant.

However, at the press conference, government officials cautioned that these tests should not replace the molecular PCR tests that are more common. PCR tests, by their nature, are more sensitive and provide more accurate results than antigen tests.

But rapid antigen tests are a crucial tool in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, particularly as it relates to initial screening of large populations. The speed of results allow testing to be done more often and quickly. In those congregate settings, like in nursing homes and even schools, it can help provide a roadmap to isolate infections.

“The sensitivity of the [antigen] test is not as good as PCR, but if you’re using it for screening in a population that has low community spread, it is a good tool,” Dr. Monica Lypson of George Washington University told DCist/WAMU earlier this month. “I think we feel comfortable in medicine using tests that don’t have a 95% to 99% sensitivity as the PCR when we know we’re using it for screening protocols.”

Currently, Maryland has done more than 2.1 million tests for just under 25% of its population.

For the moment, rapid antigen tests remain hard to come by and limited in the D.C.-area, mainly due to the lack of availability of supplies needed for the tests and concerns over their performance.

However, Maryland’s imminent deployment of a quarter of a million tests that they claim to have an accuracy rate of about 85% may change that. Presumably, Virginia (which was also part of the original August compact) isn’t far behind.

“The ultimate goal, we might use 100 million of these tests [within that] group of states,” said Hogan. “But this is the first batch.”