How can stop the COVID-19 pandemic? Harvard doc says cheap testing is the answer.

08/10/2020 Business, Entertainment, Health, Science, Technology, USA

Currently, tests are designed for medical purposes. They identify if someone with symptoms has COVID-19 or not. But they miss – according to Mina’s estimate – 97% of the people when they are most infected.

COVID-19, we now know, is most contagious the first few days – just before a person shows symptoms and in the few days after symptoms begin, if they ever do. Waiting until someone has symptoms before putting them to a test means they do not know they were contagious until they are not.

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In recent weeks, Mina, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, has lobbied for rapid, inexpensive, home testing, and hopes to get the federal government to fund its development and remove obstacles to its approval. He has talks with senators, foreign leaders, and business leaders, who share this idea, but are becoming increasingly frustrated by the administration’s actions.

On Friday, he shared his vision with reporters on a group of Zoom calls. What follows is an edited version of what he said.

What is the difference between current COVID-19 tests and what do you suggest?

The tests that are now being used are like Deluxe Espresso machines. These are tests that require instrumentation. There will be a huge, huge startup cost to go through with it and each individual test will be expensive. They will have a hard time getting the scale where it needs to be to make an impact at a population level. What I really want is the coffee version. I want a thing of $ 1 against a thing of $ 20.

How can tests be used to stop the transmission of COVID-19?

The way to do that is to use inexpensive tests that are highly accurate to detect one at the time they are forwarded. People can trade on it because they get instant results. I want them to take them every day or every other day.

More: ‘Totally Unacceptable’: Delay testing forces labs to prioritize COVID testing for some, not others

How could they trade on it?

If we can get a test that wakes everyone up – just like they put in their contact lenses – then they take a test. And if it turns out positive, they stay home. And they take a test the next day and they stay home until the test becomes negative, like for a certain number of days, maybe 7 days.

That alone, if everyone does it, or even just a majority of people do it, will stop the vast majority of the transmission and it will cause these outbreaks to disappear in a few weeks. We do not have to wait for a fax.

You think that would make so much of a difference?

We could probably reduce the transmission in this country by 90-95% in the coming weeks if everyone could have one of these tests tomorrow. Of course, this is not possible at the moment, but it could be if the federal government treats this with the same urgency that they treat a vaccine, which may or may not work.

What do you think the government should do?

(The government would have to) Put $ 1 billion into real pressure on the technology for $ 1 paper strip tests that can be printed in the millions, which they can be, and get a package of 50 in hand of every American in the next month – if not even every American – it could be just Texas, Arizona and Florida at the moment, because those are the states that sow infections to other states.

Why do these tests not already exist?

We allow desktop and this archaic view – we have so many years so many years polluted and appreciated public health in this country that we literally have no recognition of the fact that there could be a test whose main purpose is public health and not clinical medicine. Everything is packaged in fees for fees and FDA regulations as diagnostics. It takes a lot of rethinking about what a test one can use looks like and how it is defined.

That, this is a regulatory issue?

I’m not normally against regulation, but it’s just gotten so extreme here, and it’s really been every step of the way since February to test our way out of this virus. Today’s landscape has these bottleneck companies that today can have a cheap test to produce a more expensive espresso machine because they can not use the instant coffee legally.

Until the changing landscape of regulation, these companies have no reason to try to bring (a quick, cheap, test home) to market. That said, many of them are just kind of sitting on it. Or they try to spend more time and more money on tests and better optimize, which can take months. My fear is that what will come out at the end of those months is a test that meets FDA approval, but that is too expensive and too complicated to scale and use for everyone.

How do you respond to people who criticize cheap tests being less accurate and reliable than current tests?

Many people waste time trying to figure out how instant coffee can become as good as espresso. There are different things.

Do you have a financial interest in any of the companies that do these tests?

I have no financial ties or any other connection with any of these companies. I actually just base this on science.

And do you really think this is the best hope for getting a pandemic?

We have no fax tomorrow. We have nothing but to shut down the economy and keep schools closed. This can work. This is a piece of equipment that could start production tomorrow and within a few weeks could change the entire course of outbreaks in major cities in America and thereby make the entire United States safer.

Contact Karen Weintraub at [email protected]

Coverage for health and patient safety at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How to stop the COVID-19 pandemic? Harvard doc says cheap testing is the answer.

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