Test Model: New coronavirus testing program in Greenville, N.C.

Primary tabs

Wed, 2021-04-28 18:14 — mike kraft

The future of coronavirus testing is in Greenville, N.C. One million testing kits, 40,000 families and an ambitious bid to stop community transmission. Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post

After a busy day of grocery shopping and other errands, Diane Bell slid into a kitchen chair and took out her at-home coronavirus test kits. She swabbed both her nostrils and mixed a few chemicals, and within a few minutes, a blue line materialized on an indicator strip.

“Negative!” she called out to her partner. It was her seventh test in three weeks, and so far, so good.

Bell’s testing is part of one of the largest, most ambitious and high-stakes scientific experiments of the coronavirus pandemic — to persuade families and whole communities to incorporate home kits into their everyday routines to identify and stop infections as the nation inches toward full reopening.

Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it aims to distribute 2 million free at-home test kits to 80,000 families in Greenville, N.C. and the rest of Pitt County, and in Chattanooga, Tenn., to conduct regular testing from now until around June.

Researchers hope that by encouraging people to test themselves even if they feel perfectly fine, the country will be able to slow down — and eventually extinguish — the spread of the virus.

The project is part of a larger pivot in the nation’s coronavirus testing strategy to focus on prevention, and it is a recognition that one of the biggest mistakes made early on was underestimating the impact of asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic spreaders.

County officials in North Carolina and Tennessee will monitor the level of virus in wastewater and track emergency room visits, hospitalizations and other indicators of community spread in hopes they will see those go down. Early results should be available sometime in the summer, and if the results are positive, the model could be replicated across America.

“We could really change the game here,” said NIH Director Francis Collins. “Even after we get to a high level of vaccination, we will still not be 100 percent, so testing is going to be with us for quite a long time.” ...

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags: