<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>neuro</author><text>The technology below can do it in 15 seconds. An ingenious 18 year old glucoses meter company hacked a glucose meter to do it. Interesting past between them and JNJ. They submitted it for EAU.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pharmatechsolutions.co&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;inserts&amp;#x2F;20200318_GenViro!_PP.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pharmatechsolutions.co&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;inserts&amp;#x2F;20200318_Ge...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>