A Stanford Health Care laboratory has created its own Coronavirus or COVID-19 test which is being used on Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health patients who are suspected of being affected by the Novel Coronavirus.
The lad started to develop this test in January 2020 after thousands died of the COVID-19 since its outbreak in December 2019. The Stanford lab confirmed that the test meets the requirements to be a useful clinical tool in February. But the most unique thing about this test is, it is expected to show authentic results in 12 to 24 hours.
New Coronavirus test kit
As per Stanford Medicine news release the test was being used on Tuesday, March 3, on patients with suspected Novel Coronavirus infection that has killed over 3,400 and affected more than 100,000 worldwide.
A team of scientists at Stanford's clinical virology lab has developed the test. As per Dr Benjamin Pinsky, a clinical virologist with Stanford, this newly developed test successfully identified the presence of Novel Coronavirus in positive samples "without cross-reacting with the seasonal coronaviruses or other common respiratory viruses, including influenza."
The need for more Coronavirus tests
The health officials expressed that considering the alarming condition caused by the COVID-19 US needs more tests for the virus. Dr Lisa Maragakis, the senior director of infection prevention for the Johns Hopkins Health System said during a Congress said that the testing capacity is not currently adequate, so the doctors need more reliable tests to treat the patients of new Coronavirus.
In a news release, LabCorp said that they can now perform thousands of tests every day and the results will take three to four days, while Quest Diagnostics Inc. also stated that their Coronavirus test will start on March 9. While talking about these approaches Maragakis said that "All of those individual efforts are to be commended because we desperately need the testing."
However, as reported by The Atlantic, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration said on Monday, March 2 that by the end of this week nearly millions of tests will be available to be performed. In addition, it should be mentioned that US Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday, March 4 that around 1.5 million tests would be available by the next week.
Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2009 to 2017, told the news outlet that "The CDC got this right with H1N1 and Zika and produced huge quantities of test kits that went around the country" but he has no idea what went wrong this time.
Is CDC taking Coronavirus cases lightly?
It was recently reported that the CDC has failed to release crucial information about COVID-19 which could help save the lives of Americans diagnosed with the new Coronavirus. The federal agency has shared clinical information about only one patient, while they have records of several US patients who have recovered from the new Coronavirus. It should be mentioned that the information includes what treatments the patients received and how they proceeded with it.
Dr Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University told CNN that "It's a medical truism that it's absolutely essential that physicians with experience with a particular condition disseminate information to others," and added that not sharing such valuable information is very "inexplicable and inappropriate."
