Category: COVID-19 Diagnostics

Convalescent plasma therapy recently received EUA from the FDA for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Although the efficacy of this treatment is still not well understood and clinical trials are ongoing (read more about the current standing of this therapy on our blog’s clinical trials page), identifying possible plasma donors who may have sufficient…

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology is an approach for infectious disease surveillance and can serve as an early warning system for disease outbreaks (Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern 2020). Wide application of wastewater surveillance began in the 1990s with efforts to eradicate poliovirus. Although SARS-CoV-2 is not primarily spread through fecal-oral transmission like polio, the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA has…

SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza A/B, the predominant types of flu to spread each year with its peak around December to February, are both spread via respiratory droplets. The dynamics of how a co-infection by the two viral pathogens could influence the disease course in people  is unclear.  A report published in Science explains that the flu…

In a new wave of technology development, a rapid antigen test that reads results directly from a single card received emergency use authorization from the FDA this week. Unlike other diagnostic tests, BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card does not require RT-PCR technology or a machine to read. To perform the test, a nasal swab specimen is…

As businesses, schools, and workplaces continue to reopen, rapid testing is a pressing need in order to effectively control the spread of COVID-19 and cut chains of transmission. The average wait time for test results in Texas is 4 days and a recent nation-wide survey shows that nearly 40% of Americans have to wait more…

This week, I wanted to discuss the relevance of antibody testing and seroprevalence studies in the fight against COVID-19. Serology tests can identify SARS-CoV-2 IgG or IgM antibodies in the bloodstream to determine whether patients, who may have had mild or asymptomatic illness and did not seek medical care or undergo testing, have previously been…

Pool testing is a strategy in which samples from several people are tested together for SARS-CoV-2. This allows more samples to be tested quickly while utilizing fewer resources. If a pooled test result is positive, each of the samples are then individually tested to determine which samples are positive. This strategy is recommended for use…

This week, leaders from the National Institutes of Health detailed ongoing plans to increase the number, quality, and type of tests for SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics (Tromberg et al. 2020). The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program was established on April 29 after $1.5 billion of federal stimulus funding was appropriated to the NIH. RADx aims to…