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Mass rapid-testing for COVID-19– especially of those individuals showing no indications of infection– could bring an end to the pandemic within 6 weeks, claims a brand-new research study by scientists at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the University of Colorado Stone.
Published November 20 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the study suggests that quick tests, although less trusted, could allow public health authorities to rely on more targeted interventions, rather than economy-wide lockdowns, if deployed on a huge scale.
Rapid tests are low cost and can return results in a matter of minutes, rather than the days connected with the lab range. If half the US population were tested weekly, with those who check favorable isolating from the rest, the effect would be massive, scientists said.
” Our big picture finding is that, when it comes to public health, it’s much better to have a less sensitive test with outcomes today than a more sensitive test with results tomorrow,” Daniel Larremore, a computer science teacher at CU Boulder and lead author of the study, stated Friday. “Instead of telling everyone to stay home so you can be sure that one individual who is sick does not spread it, we might give only the infectious people stay-at-home orders so everyone else can set about their lives.”
According to the research study, based on mathematical modeling, rapid-testing three-quarters of a city’s population every three days slashed the number of those ultimately infected by 88%, “sufficient to drive the epidemic towards extinction within 6 weeks.”
” These rapid tests are contagiousness tests,” Michael Mina, a teacher of epidemiology at Harvard and coauthor of the research study, said in a news release. “They are exceptionally efficient in finding COVID-19 when people are contagious.”
Increasing the availability of “cheap, fast tests” is one of the essential methods under factor to consider by President-elect Joe Biden, Politico reported Friday.
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