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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued Emergency Use Authorization to Illinois-based medical device maker Abbott Labs on Friday for a coronavirus test that delivers positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes, the company said.
The company expects the tests to be available next week and expects to ramp up manufacturing to deliver 50,000 tests per day.
"I am pleased that the FDA authorized Abbott's point-of-care test yesterday. This is big news and will help get more of these tests out in the field rapidly," FDA Commissioner Steve Hahn said in a statement. "We know how important it is to get point-of-care tests out in the field quickly. These tests that can give results quickly can be a game changer in diagnosing COVID-19."
Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, echoed Hahn's comments on Twitter, calling the development a "game changer." Gottlieb also said it's "very likely" that we'll see additional approvals of point-of-care diagnostics behind this one, extending testing to doctor offices across the U.S.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2020, @08:08AM (1 child)
If everyone has COVID-19 or had already contracted it, we wouldn't be seeing exponential growth in cases. The data do NOT support your statement, which is utterly ridiculous.
Of the known cases of COVID-19 in Italy, the case fatality rate is at 11.03%. Yes, it's at 11%. Spain's case fatality rate is increasing and rapidly approaching that number, currently at 8.28%. Even if you say those are due to limited testing of milder cases and overloaded hospitals, none of those apply to South Korea. The case fatality rate in South Korea is 1.64%. That's over 16 times the case fatality rate of influenza most years.
How, exactly, is this an overreaction? Do tell.
The problem here isn't that people are overreacting. Aside from some of the panic buying, people aren't overreacting at all. If anything, they're underreacting because of assholes like you spreading misinformation. It's bullshit like your post that leads people to think the risk is overstated, which is one of the reasons people disregard social distancing guidelines that could help bring the spread of this virus under control. You're no better than the anti-vaxxers who claim that vaccines are causing children to develop autism. There's a special place in hell for people like you who spread misinformation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2020, @01:05PM
Northern Italy is very polluted, and has a history of bad outcomes for respiratory diseases in hospital. When only the sickest people then go to hospital, and the government counts everybody dying with the disease, not of the disease as a victim, you get bigger numbers.
This years flu is rather mild, but CDC pegs it as having killed up to 50k this year. Covid-19 likely won't reach its body count. The British government for its part has already removed Covid-19 from its list of high risk diseases last week.