Nuclear Scientists Developing Faster, Cheaper Covid-19 Test (bloomberg.com) 38
Nuclear scientists in Austria are closing in on new coronavirus testing kits that could dramatically lower the cost and time it takes to diagnose people for the disease. From a report: With Covid-19 tests in short supply in many places, some individuals have turned to private laboratories that can genetically detect the pathogen. That process, called reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, can cost as much as $400 in some private facilities. But the International Atomic Energy Agency expects it can produce Covid-19 tests costing as little as 10 euros ($10.83) that yield a diagnosis within hours, according to an spokesperson, who said the IAEA kits are close to being shipped. While the IAEA's individual tests may top out at 15 euros a person, countries will still need laboratories to process the results. Setting up a new facility from scratch can cost as much as 100,000 euros, according to the agency. The IAEA's lab outside Vienna has previously developed kits testing for Ebola, Zika and African Swine Fever. Fourteen countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America asked the agency's scientists earlier this month to help them ramp up testing. The effort drew an extra $5 million of funding on Tuesday from the U.S. State Department.
IKEA (Score:3, Funny)
Did anyone else read that as "IKEA kits" at first, or just me!?
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I did too.
Re: Why can't we just... (Score:1)
Re: Why can't we just... (Score:1)
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Yeah, that's so you don't worry when the medical staff has parts left over after assembling it.
wow (Score:2)
This story was picked up by our local media weeks ago. This is the same organism led by argentinian Rafael Grossi, the first one to report the potential location of ARA San Juan. Their submarine seismographs (used to detect possible nuclear tests) detected the implosion months before it was finally found... near the predicted location.
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Re: USA USA (Score:1)
Go ahead and mod this down, too, because hiding facts is better than admitting to reality when you have an agenda.
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You prefer the European system which has been working so well in Italy and Spain?
Let's see how well the US health system holds up when they have an equivalent proportion of infections.
Blood tests are a better option long-term (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest problem with RT-PCR tests is that you're amplifying a tiny bit of genetic material, so if you don't swab the right places and actually get that material, you stand a decent chance of getting false negatives, missing an actual illness.
While this approach is great for trained medical professionals who are already screening a sick patient for a dozen things already, as part of a general respiratory assay, what we really desperately need right now is a blood test that can detect whether you have been exposed to the virus, that is almost foolproof (where less trained people can administer it), that don't require the use of outside laboratories, and that can detect that exposure even if you are not [yet|still] actively sick.
Fortunately, those blood tests are already hitting the market. They are much, much faster than RT-PCR, even if you have an in-house lab, yielding results in 10 to 45 minutes (depending on the test), rather than hours, and don't require any sort of laboratory, so there's no bottleneck other than manufacturing yield. Although the accuracy of blood tests isn't as good (both in terms of specificity and sensitivity), I'd expect it to effectively be more sensitive than a swab test during stages when shedding is low, and specificity failures can always be fixed by a follow-up test with RT-PCR or whatever.
I'm looking forward to much broader availability of such blood tests, because I think that mass testing is what's really needed to turn the tide.
The UK is getting three million (Score:1)
I'm looking forward to much broader availability of such blood tests
It looks like they are coming quickly, the U.K. has over three million blood tests [slashdot.org] they are about to release, where people can just test at home similar to a pregnancy test.
That's really key, the ability for people who feel sick or have even just been around a large number of people recently, to know if they should isolate or not without having to go anywhere. If everyone could self test every seven days, or all air travelers had to show a
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If I'm not mistaken, the blood tests are *immunoassays*. These are not *more* useful than PCR, they're *differently useful*.
PCR detects the presence of virus by amplifying its genetic material. Immunoassays detect your immune system's response to the virus. This is why the protocol for declaring a case closed is two consecutive negative PCR tests; an immunoassay will show positive long after the virus is cleared.
PCR is usually better than immunoassays at detecting active infections early.
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Correct. They respond to whether your body has produced antibodies to the infection or not.
When I said that having blood tests is more useful, I meant that having a blood test (versus none) is more useful than speeding up the PCR tests (versus existing PCR tests), because blood tests are massively parallelizable in a way that the PCR tests cannot feasibly be. And because the blood te
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> I think that mass testing is what's really needed to turn the tide.
And this is at a price point where the currently worst-affected countries can afford to stop arguing and Just. Test. Everyone. Hopefully the next batch will be even cheaper, and other countries (India, Brazil) will conclude that testing everyone is cheaper than trying to track everyone and ration the tests out. I too think this would be a major turning point if it can be reached. We'd actually know exactly how big the problem is, and th
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I conclude the summary and article don't know the half of what's out there because AFAIK current tests are available from â13 and the UK will shortly be selling from chemists blood pin prick tests that the public can buy and use.
https://www.channel4.com/news/... [channel4.com]
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
Article says Bangledesh will get a kit that costs roughly $3:
"According to the Gano Shasthaya Kendra, the kit will cost approximately BDT250-300.
The standard method of diagnosis of coronavirus is by reverse trans
Nuclear ... (Score:2, Offtopic)
So Nuclear is good now ? Do we need a Nuclear Power station in the backyard in order to get tested ?
:-)
Are there any Solar or Wind COVID-19 tests ?
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Do we need a Nuclear Power station in the backyard in order to get tested ?
Actually you need some nuclear waste in your backyard. That's where medical isotopes are extracted from.
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It's just another RT-PCR assay. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a bunch of private companies working on RT-PCR tests as well. The key to making the results fast is to automate and shrink the apparatus so it can be installed near where the samples are taken. Most hospitals and certainly the makeshift hospitals we should see brought into existence over the next few weeks would otherwise have to send the test out to their local state public health lab, which adds days of transport and handling to a test that can be done in a few hours.
The technology is there. Somebody has to pay to obtain and deploy it where it's needed.
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Well, I think with most of these quick/cheap tests it's not really automating/shrinking the apparatus (which is mostly automated anyway) it is using a different and much simpler detection method with a fixed number of PCR cycles.
The downside is it is pretty much a yes/no answer, rather than a quantitative one that can be interpreted, so they have to be set to high high number of false positives to minimise false negatives. In this case that isn't a problem as false positives likely mean someone being asked
Buying stuff for crime labs (Score:2)
Of course this group would want to jump in - It's going to be easy to get a few million euros to finance equipment that is often not available to smaller crime labs out of this crisis.
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Especially not mobile labs.
African Swine Fever (Score:1)
> African Swine Fever
CNN: Thasss raysissss!
Guys, you're missing the target (Score:2)
You're atomic scientists. What I asked for was a neutron bomb which only kills caronaviruses. Get on it.
Baltar (Score:2)
Oh, so that's what Baltar needed that bomb for...
Nuclear Nadal (Score:1)
Free testing in the Republic of Wadiya.
Yeah (Score:2)
Sounds cheap (Score:1)
Setting up a new facility from scratch can cost as much as 100,000 euros, according to the agency.
Since we're burning multiple billions per day shutting down most countries preemptively, why not just shop a huge batch of these and hope they work? In order to lift the lock down based on more thorough testing.
Minutes or hours for test results may not be important for most scenarios, assuming the results are offloaded to anonymous websites for individual look up
What maters seems to be testing a significant part of the population, and quarantine immediatly on positives.