The race to make coronavirus testing as easy as a pregnancy test

Despite having more coronavirus cases than any other country, America has a testing rate below several countries that have lower per-capita rates of the virus.

The slow rollout of testing has crippled us from making more progress and opening up the economy, says Ryan Demmer of the division of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota.

While testing for active infections has much improved since March, tests are still in short supply in some areas around the country. And where tests are readily attainable, results can still take several days.

Now numerous companies are racing to develop rapid at-home tests. Rather than requiring advanced lab equipment for processing, as current tests do, these new ones would use a sample collected at home and, like a pregnancy test, give you a simple positive or negative in less than an hour.

If these rapid tests prove to be accurate, affordable, and easy to manufacture, they could allow many more Americans to test themselves, even on a regular basis. This could be a huge asset in the fight against the coronavirus, which continues to spread in the US and take thousands of lives a week.

“These tools are urgently needed,” says Amanda Castel, a doctor, and professor of epidemiology at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

And for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, testing is particularly important, Demmer says, “because a lot of the transmission happens from asymptomatic people or presymptomatic people” people who don’t have any signs of the virus. In fact, people seem to be most infectious just before they start to have symptoms.

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