<story><title>FDA grants emergency use authorization for 5-13 minute Covid-19 test</title><url>https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/detect-covid-19-in-as-little-as-5-minutes.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>edouard-harris</author><text>Hi - I posted this submission to HN. Based on the comments I&amp;#x27;m seeing, it might be helpful if I clarified why I think this news is of extreme significance.&lt;p&gt;The key facts are:&lt;p&gt;1. This is a test that directly detects SARS-Cov-2 virus. It can, if sensitive enough, tell you if you&amp;#x27;re infected even if you don&amp;#x27;t have any symptoms.&lt;p&gt;2. The detection time is &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; fast: 5 minutes for a positive result; 13 minutes for a negative.&lt;p&gt;3. The testing device is pretty compact. (Fits on a tabletop.)&lt;p&gt;If, in addition to the above, the following are &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; true:&lt;p&gt;4. The sensitivity of the test is high enough.&lt;p&gt;5. We can quickly scale manufacture of the testing platform and its reagents.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#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.&lt;p&gt;The specificity of this test almost doesn&amp;#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.&lt;p&gt;We can also ignore regulatory obstacles such as &amp;quot;this is only allowed in hospitals right now&amp;quot;. The wider this testing regime is deployed, the higher a level of economic activity we can sustain while keeping R0 &amp;lt; 1. And given the scale of the stimulus efforts already underway, it&amp;#x27;s clear the government will do anything it can to revive the economy. Administrative barriers will be abolished as needed.&lt;p&gt;Obviously this scenario is conditional on all the above actually being true. But this is the most hopeful development I&amp;#x27;ve heard of since mid-February.&lt;p&gt;* To be absolutely pedantic, it probably means more like a 95-98% mitigation of the pandemic within a few months.</text></comment>
<story><title>FDA grants emergency use authorization for 5-13 minute Covid-19 test</title><url>https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/detect-covid-19-in-as-little-as-5-minutes.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mcbits</author><text>Do these faster and faster tests all use the same reagent that has been in short supply? And has there been any progress on producing it faster, or using less of it for an accurate test?</text></comment>