February 5, 2021 – The Biden government urges more Americans to provide rapid home tests for COVID-19.
In a media call on Friday, Andy Slavitt, the White House’s senior advisor on pandemic response, told reporters that the administration is working with six companies to advance the production of home test kits, “with the goal of Summer to have millions of Americans with access to home tests. “
So far the plan lacks details. He didn’t name the companies or tests, but said more announcements would be made shortly.
“At-home testing is one of the most important steps you can take to get back to normal life,” said Slavitt.
As the US waits for vaccines to ease the pandemic, experts believe an important way to fight the virus and fully reopen the economy could be to use quick, cheap paper strip tests to find people who could be spreading COVID-19.
The tests use saliva or a swab from the nose mixed in some solution. Users place the solution on a strip of paper, similar to how home pregnancy tests work.
The tests use proteins embedded in the paper to identify and detect key parts of the virus. When the virus is found, another indicator – like a line or a plus sign – changes color to show the result.
Since the tests refer to a portion of the coronavirus that does not mutate, they should still work well to detect the new variants of the virus on your own.
Regulators have been careful about approving them because they have a higher rate of false negative results than gold standard PCR tests done in a laboratory.
Instead, the results are most accurate when a person has a lot of virus circulating in their body, usually a day or two before showing symptoms a few days after they become sick.
While this may make them less reliable for diagnosing COVID-19 infection in someone who is sick or has been carrying the virus for a while, testing experts say they are great as screening tools – a way to catch contagious people and isolate them before they can spread the virus.
Michael Mina, PhD, assistant professor at the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard and an expert in diagnostic tests, was a proponent of rapid tests to control the spread of the virus. He said he hadn’t received any funding from testing companies despite speaking to many of them about their technologies.
“This test is as powerful as it is because if you are positive it will find you. It won’t tell you that you were positive 2 weeks ago like PCR will tell you that you were positive 2 weeks ago, “he said.” And it will give it to you at a time when it is actionable in 15 minutes . ”
Mina says that if the tests are cheap enough, people could test themselves two to three times a week before going to work, for example to know when to stay home so they don’t run the risk of hitting their peers infect workers. The tests can be used at the entrances to sports arenas, concerts and airports to catch contagious individuals who may not know because they are not showing symptoms.
He said the strategy that many people are trying to use now – testing themselves a few days before traveling or visiting family – is “useless, and I cannot say enough. This is a pointless waste of money, “he said on Friday in an interview with reporters.
“The best thing you can do is test yourself before you go into what it is, be it work or school or an event or the grocery store, whatever it is,” he said.
The success of such a plan depends on having plenty of rapid tests done and being cheap enough for users to use regularly.
Slavitt said the US is on the way to that goal.
In addition to the new tests announced on Friday, Slavitt said the US would be working with an Australian company called Ellume to bring 8.5 million of their tests to Americans by the end of the year. This test uses a device that connects to a smartphone app to provide test results to users in around 15 minutes. It can also connect to public health reporting systems to help health authorities follow up on positive cases.
Mina said he doesn’t think the Ellume test can be an effective screening tool. For one, it can be out of reach for regular use due to its price. When it was approved in December, the company said the kit would cost about $ 30 to test, which is too expensive for people and businesses to use frequently. Mina said the amount the US ordered would only be around 3,000 tests per day, not nearly the millions of daily tests the US would have to use for a while to control the spread of the virus.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “We wasted money on it. It’s a total waste of money. “
So far, the FDA has refused to approve other rapid tests for home use because their results have so far not been accurate enough to meet the agency’s standards for diagnostic testing.
Mina says if the rules were more flexible, the FDA could approve several new tests and roll them out to Americans very quickly.
“I don’t think it’s good to wait until summer,” he said in a call to reporters on Friday. “I am encouraged that the administration is taking several steps right now to signal that it will push for faster access to testing, but I think we have these tests ahead of us right now. We just need to listen a little more to the science. “
WebMD Health News
sources
Andy Slavitt, White House Senior Advisor on Pandemic Response, Washington, DC.
Michael Mina, PhD, Assistant Professor, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Cambridge, MA.
White House COVID Response Team press conference, February 5, 2021.
© 2021 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.
Comments are closed.