On a day that has seen bad news piled so high atop bad news that a deadly hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast can’t even get much attention, here’s some good news.
Via Michelle Fay Cortez of Bloomberg News, Abbott has received emergency FDA authorization for a $5 dollar home COVID-19 test that will produce results within 15 minutes. Abbott vows to produce 50 million of these tests per month, by October.
According to the Abbott press release, the test has been determined to have sensitivity of 97.1 percent and specificity of 98.5 percent in clinical study.
It’s unclear whether and to what extent the NFL will embrace this test; currently, the NFL uses both laboratory testing and point-of-care testing to clear players to practice and play. Regardless, the development moves the nation closer to a point where people who have the virus will know it, and where people who don’t have it will know it.
Even if more tests will inevitably result in more cases.