Sona Nanotech Inc C.SONA

Refresh from Rockefeller’s foundation

[zoe18]

We need, above all, an effective national testing strategy – something the nation sorely lacks today. Millions who want and need testing can’t get access quickly. Overburdened clinical labs take days to return results that are accurate but too late to support informed decision-making and effective contact tracing. Businesses and schools that are trying to reopen, as well as many communities that are hard-hit, are trying to use screening tests – but have little practical guidance for who, how, and when to test. The cost of tests and concerns about the reliability of many tests adds to the failures of current testing approaches to achieve containment of the virus.

An effective testing strategy will require the country to ramp up to where it can administer at least five million diagnostic tests and 25 million screening tests a week within three months, with the acknowledgment that we will need still more than that. This must be combined with rigorous and extensive contact tracing and supported isolation. Getting to the goal of at least 30 million weekly tests, with the majority of those being screening tests, is the only way to beat back Covid-19.

If professional baseball and basketball players can get routine tests, so should our teachers, students, essential workers, nurses and bus drivers – every American, free of charge. Investing in the creation, delivery and administering of these tests will be far cheaper for the nation than the incalculable fiscal and social costs of another economic shutdown.

To hit these goals, the country will need at least another $75 billion in federal funding for testing. Insurers and government agencies must also clarify how the country will pay for this widespread screening program as it is put in place town by town, business by business and school by school. We must assure that sufficient support is flowing to the hardest hit communities, many of them Black and Hispanic, which have been disproportionally hit by Covid-19.

 

Money alone, however, will not be a sufficient catapult. The administration needs to invoke the Defense Production Act or a similar federal program to oversee and goad the production and distribution of mass quantities of fast, low-cost antigen tests. Simple, quick, easy and inexpensive tests are on the horizon. Getting them into the hands of everyone who needs them – schools, employers, health providers, public essential workers, vulnerable communities – will require the muscle that only the federal government can provide.

We need not just more tests but smarter testing. Timely access and processing for diagnostic laboratory Covid-19 tests – so-called “PCR” testing – is the most accurate way to decide whether someone with symptoms, or someone who has had a close exposure, has the virus and is infectious. The testing strategy that will contain the pandemic requires rapid access to diagnostic testing for people with symptoms and close contacts of Covid-19 cases – at least 5 million tests per week with turnaround time of less than 48 hours, and ideally less than 24 hours. We are approaching this level of testing, but with delays in access and processing that are far too long.