A Tidelands Health medical professional changes latex gloves during a COVID-19 test site on Friday, July 17, 2020 at the Myrtle Beach Pelicans Ballpark in Myrtle Beach, SC (Josh Bell / The Sun News via AP)
OAN press room
UPDATED 7:41 AM PT – Sunday July 19, 2020
The federal government has introduced a new way to speed up coronavirus testing without running out of medical supplies.
On Saturday, the FDA issued an emergency order giving Quest Diagnostics the go-ahead to begin collecting pooled samples of evidence. This will allow Quest to test up to four samples at the same time, freeing up test kits to use on more residents.
“Instead of taking an individual blood sample, a nasal sample from someone, you take a lot of them and put them together, and you do a test on that whole lot,” explained Dr. Amesh Adalja, Johns Hopkins principal investigator. University Center for Health Safety. “And then if it’s negative, all those people are clear, but if it’s positive, you can go back and individually analyze those samples to see who was positive.”
FDA officials said pooled testing is an important step in fighting coronavirus, especially when infection rates decline and health officials begin to evaluate larger populations. They predicted that this strategy will work best in areas where infection rates are lowest, and believe that positive cases will be easier to detect and trace.
Today, the FDA issued the first Emergency Use Authorization (USA) for pooling samples in a diagnostic test # COVID19. https://t.co/YtHeydxH1N pic.twitter.com/WF7Im9dIXP
– US FDA (@US_FDA) July 18, 2020
In addition, officials alleged that Quest’s procedures for validating data address any problems that may arise when samples are combined in a laboratory setting. “
“It is a very useful technique that has been used in 50-70 years, we demonstrated it,” said Dr. Christopher Pilcher, a UCSF professor. “Given what we now know about coronavirus infections, it appears that the benefits will far outweigh the loss of detection that is realized.”
Authorities said they are working with other diagnostic test developers to create new strategies to quickly screen more Americans.
