Relevant Guardian article today18 Apr 2020 19:36
Hi all
There was a very timely and pertinent article by Jonathan Freedland in the Journal section of the Guardian today: esp the need for eg saliva testing on ongoing mass scale in order for lockdown to be lifted effectively, excerpts as follows-
( So far, testing has been limited to those with symptoms and in hospital. But the Nobel laureate Paul Romer – admittedly his prize was for economics rather than epidemiology – has got a lot of attention for a plan that argues that for the economy, and human life, to return to anything like normality, testing will need to be conducted for millions of people, all the time. He imagines health workers being tested at the start of a shift; the same would go for care workers, pharmacists, police officers and bus drivers. You might add teachers and restaurant workers. Romer wouldn’t bother testing people who already have symptoms: they should be presumed positive and immediately self-isolate. It’s the “asymptomatic spreaders” you need to identify, stopping them in their tracks. The logic underpinning the plan is clear: there will be no point in reopening shops, pubs and restaurants if people feel too scared to visit them. As virologist Prof Nicolas Locker puts it, “You can’t lift the lockdown as long as you are not testing massively.”
Do the maths and the numbers are colossal: Romer estimates some 22m tests would be necessary every day in the US alone, the equivalent of testing every American once every two weeks. Consider that there’s still no sign that Matt Han**** will reach his goal of 100,000 tests a day in the UK, and you realise how many orders of magnitude stand between where we are now and where we would need to be.)
The obstacles are huge and obvious, though Romer reckons he has answers for all of them. Shortage of swabs? Move to saliva tests instead. Shortage of the key chemicals known as “reagents”? The test kits that rely on them are not the only option. The sheer numbers of tests that would have to be produced? The world’s manufacturers could do it; it just requires the political will. Which, given that our lives depend on it, should be there.)
Sky is the limit for a AVCT once product ready,
IMHO
Bapuk
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