FDA grants emergency use authorization for 5-13 minute Covid-19 test
Hi - I posted this submission to HN. Based on the comments I&#x27;m seeing, it might be helpful if I clarified why I think this news is of extreme significance.<p>The key facts are:<p>1. This is a test that directly detects SARS-Cov-2 virus. It can, if sensitive enough, tell you if you&#x27;re infected even if you don&#x27;t have any symptoms.<p>2. The detection time is <i>very</i> fast: 5 minutes for a positive result; 13 minutes for a negative.<p>3. The testing device is pretty compact. (Fits on a tabletop.)<p>If, in addition to the above, the following are <i>also</i> true:<p>4. The sensitivity of the test is high enough.<p>5. We can quickly scale manufacture of the testing platform and its reagents.<p>Then this development means the beginning of the end of the pandemic.* If all of the above are true, we can deploy fast testing to the entries&#x2F;exits of factories, offices, etc. Folks who test positive get sent home to self-quarantine; folks who test negative can go back to work. Everyone gets ~13 minutes added to their daily commute, but they can work safely without spreading the virus.<p>The specificity of this test almost doesn&#x27;t matter. Even if flu cases trigger a positive, those folks can still be sent to secondary testing or home quarantine. The government could pay them 100% of their salary for two weeks and it would still be a fantastic deal for the rest of us.<p>We can also ignore regulatory obstacles such as &quot;this is only allowed in hospitals right now&quot;. The wider this testing regime is deployed, the higher a level of economic activity we can sustain while keeping R0 &lt; 1. And given the scale of the stimulus efforts already underway, it&#x27;s clear the government will do anything it can to revive the economy. Administrative barriers will be abolished as needed.<p>Obviously this scenario is conditional on all the above actually being true. But this is the most hopeful development I&#x27;ve heard of since mid-February.<p>* To be absolutely pedantic, it probably means more like a 95-98% mitigation of the pandemic within a few months.