Description
A new novel coronavirustest may make diagnosing COVID-19 as easy as the flu. The new point-of-care test, having just received an emergency-use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will be able to deliver results in as little as five minutes, according to the manufacturer.
This test from medical device company Abbott, which begins shipping April 1, may soon be available at your local urgent care clinic.
“This is going to be the fastest molecular point-of-care test to date,” said John Frels, Ph.D., Abbott’s vice president of research and development, in an interview with ABC News. “It generates a positive result in 5 minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.”
President Donald Trump called the test “a whole new ballgame” and in a recent tweet, Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, echoed these sentiments calling it “a game changer.” During Monday’s White House briefing, Trump brought the machine that will run the new COVID-19 test to the Rose Garden for a show-and-tell, calling the new rapid test “highly accurate.”
The test will run on the company’s existing ID NOW platform, a lightweight, portable machine around the size of a small toaster, which according to Abbott, is already the most widely available molecular point-of-care testing platform in the United States today and is used for illnesses like flu and strep. As a highly mobile platform, it can be used in a variety of healthcare settings, particularly physician offices and urgent care-type settings.
According to Frels, “what it’s really going to be able to do is fill the void, which is rapid results where they’re needed for patients who need them the most.” Until this point, testing has been a fraught process in the U.S. — with tests at first very difficult to come by and then results taking days. Testing has dramatically expanded since then, but results still take time.
The ID NOW machine can test samples one at a time. A health care provider would use a swab to take a sample from a sick patient’s nose or throat and then mix the swab into a chemical solution that breaks open the virus and releases its genetic material. The sample is then placed into the ID NOW instrument, which uses a special “isothermal technology” to replicate and amplify, if present in the sample, the small section of the virus’ genetic sequences in order to quickly detect whether a person is positive or negative for COVID-19, according to Frels.
Reference: www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/rapid-coronavirus-diagnostic-test-provide-results-minutes/story%3fid=69875037
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