New story in Health from Time: New Coronavirus Test Provides Results In As Few As Five Minutes, According to Manufacturer

On March 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use to Abbott Laboratories for its rapid COVID-19 test designed for doctor’s offices, urgent care centers and smaller hospitals without complex testing labs. According to the Illinois-based company, the test can give positive results in as little as five minutes, and negative results in about 13 minutes.

The test runs on Abbot’s ID NOW device, which is about the size of the toaster, and is currently used by many sites to quickly test for flu, strep and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) while patients wait. For COVID-19, health providers would have to order an additional $40 cartridge, about the size of a replacement ink cartridge for printers, specifically developed to pick up genetic signatures of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Most insurers have pledged to cover the cost of the test, which is about the same price as the ID NOW test for flu, without additional costs to patients who qualify.

The Abbot test—like the gold standard COVID-19 test developed by the U.S. government— uses chemicals to shatter the virus’ outer shell so it spills out its genetic material, in the form of RNA. Chemical reactions then amplify that genetic material so special molecular probes in the test solution can pick up even small amounts of virus. That’s where the rapid test differs from the others in use right now; with the traditional technology, that amplification process requires repeatedly cycling the temperature of the chemical reactions from low to medium to high and back down again. The ID NOW device can perform the genetic expansion at a constant temperature, which means it can spit out results more quickly.

So why aren’t all COVID-19 tests run using the faster technology? One reason has to do with volume; traditional genetic tests can process hundreds or even thousands of tests a day; the ID NOW system can only run about four samples an hour. And while traditional tests may take longer to produce results, researchers don’t need to spend as much time developing the test itself so it can start testing people sooner. The rapid test “takes quite a bit of optimization and refining,” says John Frels, vice president of research and development at Abbott Diagnostics. That means it requires more up front development time and takes longer to get up and running.

For doctor’s offices, urgent care centers and smaller hospitals without complex lab facilities on site, the automated test could be a game changer. Doctors could run the test while patients wait, and provide results in an few minutes, rather than a few days. (Having the results could help them better advise people about how stringently they need to self-isolate and change their behavior to protect their families and friends.) Frels says that if a patient has high levels of virus in their sample—taken from the back of the throat and nose—the test’s detector can hit the threshold for a positive diagnosis in as few five minutes. (The full test runs for 15 minutes, so for people with lesser amounts of virus, the molecular reactions continue trying to find as much virus as possible in the sample.)

The portable device also may signal a sea change in the way health care will be delivered in coming years; while the rapid testing platform was initially used for a few respiratory diseases, applying it in an emergency pandemic setting could scale up testing rapidly and suppress a rising tide of transmission. Frels says that Abbott is ramping up production of COVID-19 test cartridges and plans to distribute enough to enable 50,000 tests per day by next week.

New story in Health from Time: COVID-19 Has Been ‘Apocalyptic’ for Public Transit. Will Congress Offer More Help?

While trying to get to work over the past few months, Brittany Williams, a Seattle home care worker, has often been passed by two or three buses before one stops to let her board. Buses in her area that once carried anywhere from about 50 to 100 passengers have been limited to between 12 and 18 to prevent overcrowding in response to coronavirus, and Williams’ commute, typically a half-hour ride, now takes more than double that time. Other Seattle transit riders have described budgeting as much as an extra hour per trip to account for the reduced capacity, eating into their time at work, school or with family. Even with the ridership limits in place, Williams, 34, doesn’t feel safe on public transit. Some passengers don’t wear face coverings, and bus drivers sometimes ignore capacity limits, she says. On one ride with her seven-year-old son, she decided to get off at a stop far from her home after a driver allowed a crowd of people to board. “It’s very trying. I’ll put...

New story in Health from Time: An At-Home Coronavirus Test May Be On the Way in the U.S.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to climb in the U.S. , there’s a new urgency to make sure there are as many tests as possible to diagnose people who have symptoms that might indicate an infection. Knowing if people are positive is important for guiding their next steps: self-isolation, avoiding contact with others, and, if their symptoms get worse, seeking medical care. To date, access to tests has been spotty at best across the country, and while more kits are now available than even a week ago , most are gene-based assays that take several days for commercial labs to process and produce results. That may change in about two months if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives Emergency Use Authorization to the first blood-based COVID-19 test in the U.S. Scanwell Health, an at-home test company based in California, licensed the rights to a test developed by Chinese company Innovita, which was used extensively at the height of country’s epidemic earlier this year. “The ...

New story in Health from Time: A Montana Care Home Refused Free COVID-19 Tests. Now, Nearly Every Resident Has Coronavirus

(BILLINGS, Mont.) — It was meant to be a last line of defense to protect the most vulnerable as the coronavirus spread across the United States : Montana officials offered free testing in May for staff and residents at assisted living and long-term care facilities. But not all of them followed through, according to state data, including a facility in Billings, Montana’s largest city, that cares for people with dementia and other memory problems. The virus has infected almost every resident and killed eight, accounting for almost a quarter of Montana’s 34 confirmed deaths. Thirty-six employees also have tested positive at the facility where 59 people lived before the deaths began. Read more: ‘It’s Getting Worse.’ Nursing Home Workers Confront Risks in Facilities Devastated by Coronavirus While Montana’s rates of confirmed infections and deaths are much lower than other parts of the country, the outbreak at Canyon Creek Memory Care illustrates that even the most simple an...

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