Inside Look at Developing A COVID-19 Test

Written by Jack Hassard

On March 17, 2020

Various labs are in the process of developing a COVID-19 Test. Unfortunately, the United States has been late to the crisis because the CDC decided to develop its own test kit, but it failed. It was unreliable.

In South Korea, shortly after the outbreak in China, they initiated testing. They have been able to test more than 3,600 per million people as of a few days ago. And they report very few deaths. Italy, by contrast, has tested about 826 people per million. The United States has performed 78 tests per million people.

Without testing, we will not know the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. There are 320 million people in the U.S. We’ve only tested 25,000. If we matched South Korea, we would have tested more than a million Americans.

So, now we keep hearing that tests are coming. Drive throughs will be set up, as New York is currently doing. Developing a COVID-19 Test is of the upmost goal in the U.S. It should be combined with social distancing, the U.S. to prevent the spread of the disease.

Johns Hopkins Case Study

Doctors at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have created their own coronavirus test. Karen Carroll, M.D., and Heba Mostafa, Ph.D., M.B.B.Ch., are busy in their lab working to expand the testing capabilities. In this very short video, they explain what they are doing, and how the test is being developed in a very rapid amount of time.

Without testing, we are in the dark. With testing, we have information that will help us determine the nature of the virus and its impact on the population.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay.

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