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There's no perfect panacea to the nation's testing crisis, but one oft-talked-about strategy is frequent, fast, cheap at-home testing. Lots of really interesting pros and cons to this 1/12
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/rapid-Covid-tests.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/health/coronavirus-rapid-test.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/rapid-Covid-tests.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/health/coronavirus-rapid-test.html
A few weeks back, I wrote about the idea: We can't give everyone a perfect, ultra-sensitive test, but maybe we can empower everyone to test themselves at home, daily or almost daily with something less sensitive but inexpensive and rapid. 2/12 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/rapid-Covid-tests.html
That might miss low-level infections, but probably catch a lot of the people carrying a lot of virus—likely the people who are most contagious. @michaelmina_lab has explained this theory many times over. 3/12
It's a model that differs drastically from traditional diagnostics, but that's okay—we are in unprecedented times, and testing for contagiousness could be an important way to stop the spread of disease. 4/12
Models have shown that this approach could work very well. If you test people often enough, you might not catch everyone with virus, but maybe you can probably catch people in time, before they go out and unknowingly spread disease—a risk when they have to wait for results. 5/12
But implementing this strategy could be challenging. Where will these tests come from? Can we really make and ship out tens of millions per day? Will they be equally distributed among the people who need them the most? Will at-home testing be legal? 6/12 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/health/coronavirus-rapid-test.html
And what if the tests turn up false negatives or positives? Too many of the latter and they could dwarf the number of true positives. Will people stop trusting tests? Will they even want to take them daily in the first place, or report their results? 7/12
A lot of questions remain. It'll take collaboration and creativity to find a workable solution, but it's worth considering the drawbacks and snags linked to every approach. Many are solvable. 8/12
An important note here is that people should not concentrate at the extremes here. Testing is a complex playing field; no one test will work for every setting. Even if
at-home testing doesn't take off in the millions, maybe fast tests can still be used in schools, etc. 9/12
at-home testing doesn't take off in the millions, maybe fast tests can still be used in schools, etc. 9/12
As @EBabady said: "The whole idea is to use the right test for the right patient at the right time."
Maybe those delineations will shift; it's important to keep an open mind. 10/12
Maybe those delineations will shift; it's important to keep an open mind. 10/12
What I think everyone I've spoken to agrees on: the status quo of long delays, expensive tests, overworked lab technicians, is untenable. I hope discussions continue. As @SBtotheDub told me: "Our backs are against the wall... We have to try something different." 11/12
Thank you to @JClinMicro @EBabady @aharrington1884 @Linoj_S @SBtotheDub @uma_karma April Abbott for your perspectives, and the many others I chatted with offline. 12/12
