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| Hi-Tech Covid tests galore! Have another Covid test, why doncha? (Page 1/1) |
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rinselberg
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DEC 24, 11:24 AM
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"On a yacht off St. Barts, the future of coronavirus testing is taking shape"
| quote | | Amid huge gaps in inventory and quality, several renegade companies are looking for a superior approach to the current tangled system. |
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Steven Zeitchik for the Washington Post; December 24, 2021.
https://www.washingtonpost....-at-home-detect-cue/
Read-o-Meter: 8 minutes, 17 seconds.
Audio option "Listen to article" 9 minutes.
Two photographs of test kits.
The problematic nature of antigen-sensitive testing:
| quote | More than 200,000 new coronavirus cases are now being documented in the United States every day, yet it’s surprisingly difficult to be counted among them. Long wait times abide for the lab-based molecular tests commonly called PCRs — hours to get swabbed, one to two days for the results. Meanwhile, the at-home antigen test (among the kinds you are likely to find out of stock at your local CVS are Abbott BinaxNOW, Quidel Quickvue and Ellume) are not only unavailable but rife with false negatives.
The antigen test is to the molecular test like a cloth mask is to the N95. Unlike the molecular process — which searches for genetic evidence, or RNA, signaling the virus — antigen methods look for the antigens that invade the body during an infection. That means it can miss many positive cases — over 20 percent, according to numerous studies. Antigen tests may not catch the virus unless it’s replicating heavily, which means it could miss instances in which a person is infectious but not yet wildly symptomatic.
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On Wednesday, Biden promised Americans 500 million at-home tests. But that will be primarily via contracts for antigen tests, which could only perpetuate the problem: many more people will be given false negatives and the false sense of security that comes with it, setting them loose to infect others. |
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What's better? Molecular testing. But these at-home molecular test kits aren't cheap. People could organize themselves and share, it would seem.
Cue Health
https://shop.cuehealth.com/
Detect
https://detect.com/
Lucira
https://shop.lucirahealth.com/
Not available now or anytime real soon, but this could be the future of at-home molecular testing for viruses:
"Sensor based on quantum physics could detect SARS-CoV-2 virus"
| quote | | Mathematical simulations show the new approach may offer faster, cheaper, and more accurate detection, including identifying new variants. |
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David L. Chandler for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology news office; December 20, 2021.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/q...or-detect-covid-1220[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-24-2021).]
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