I don’t know, this article is discussing what SHOULD be a whole new phase of testing.We’re not anywhere near doing enough testing and this article discusses the way out of that.
Techniques such as pooling PCR tests could save time and money while increasing testing capacity 10-50-fold. New sequencing techniques could increase capacity and allow an additional 1 million tests per day. Regulatory hurdles are placing an immense burden on the release of new antigen testing technologies, and while I’m not too keen on some of the limits of detection of the strip tests, they’re still better than our current capacity. The antigen tests should be approved for wide use.
It can take up to 14 days to get test results back, which negates the value of getting the test. Are you going to sit home for 14 days and wait for the results? Are you going to go out and potentially infect others? We really need to do better than we are currently. Long waits, supply-chain problems, regulatory burdens, and lack of federal coordination of a testing program are stifling our efforts to recover.
The main thesis of the article is an important one. We need to increase testing capacity if we want to get back to normal. This requires innovation an implementation of rapid tests and requires the ability to test everyone every day. Back in April or March there was promise of new rapid tests from Abbot that were supposed to take only 15 minutes. What ever happened to all the innovation that was supposed to happen back then? It seems to have fizzled, along with our will to mount any coordinated effort to fight the virus and get back to normal.