Visualisation (virtual!)30 Jun 2020 11:06
Imagine a chart. Along one side are the patients ranging from showing no symptoms to those showing severe symptoms. Along the other axis you have viral load. The reason this is a nightmare is that the scatter graph of people will not show a lovely straight line, it will be exactly that, scattered. The other challenge is when you introduce time since infection in to the equation and if you watched an animation, you’d see the dots representing the people moving in various directions as their viral loads change and as their symptoms develop and fade. A further challenge is the virus moving from the throat towards the lungs, so you have many variables to contend with. To keep things easy don’t try and visualise in that many dimensions. Focus on symptoms versus viral load.
Now, the existing testing methods will miss some of the areas in the chart. They’ll miss some people they should have captured due to poor sampling, they’ll miss others due to them being asymptomatic. The test strip alleviates both these scenarios as it enables mass screening. It won’t cover everyone on the chart, but it’ll cover a greater area than other tests do. That is why it will be in huge demand and a global success in the fight against Covid.