Why wait for someone to develop symptoms before testing? — COVID-19 testing

"Another way researchers are trying to bring testing to the masses is to devise assays that could be used in temporary testing facilities, drive-through testing centres and even in people’s homes. At least two teams are taking advantage of the gene-editing technology CRISPR to power such tests. For example, researchers led by Zhang have developed a coronavirus assay that can be run in a single test tube in about an hour4. But it still requires heating the sample to about 65 °C, and it’s not as sensitive as a PCR-based assay. “That’s okay, because it’s much easier to use,” Zhang says. When tested multiple times on samples from 12 people infected with coronavirus, the assay detected the virus on nearly every occasion. The test builds on an approach that Zhang co-developed in 2017, called SHERLOCK5, which relies on the ability of the CRISPR machinery to home in on specific genetic sequences. Researchers program a guide molecule to latch on to a particular stretch of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. If the guide molecule finds a match, a CRISPR enzyme generates a signal that can be detected either as a fluorescent glow or as a dark band on a paper dipstick (see ‘Cut and detect’). On 6 May, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a SHERLOCK coronavirus assay for emergency use. The test is made by biotechnology firm Sherlock BioSciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts (of which Zhang is a co-founder), and the company has partnered with a manufacturer to mass-produce the kits. (See also ‘Coronavirus assays assessed’.)"

"I think I read yesterday a report that we’ve done more than everybody — every other country — combined, we’ve tested more than every other country in the world even put together."

"Johnsons change of tack was to move finally towards lockdown, advising against mass gatherings and urging people to avoid clubs, pubs, and restaurants — and most travel — as well as advising older people to self isolate. (And of course, it was only advisory – so that finance capital does not have to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of insurance claims from small businesses.) But this has still left a gaping hole in government virus strategy. First, the World Health Organization (WHO) advice — "test, test, test" — is not being implemented. Health workers who were being organised to take on this role were almost immediately stood down. Everything is being done in secrecy: there is no openness, no transparency, no grown-up debate, no democratic scrutiny, no public accountability. We can only guess at the reason. Perhaps they realised it was hopeless because they didn’t have the testing kits. Perhaps it dawned on them that mass testing would reveal the vast numbers already infected and thus expose the scale of their negligence. What is certain is that willful blindness is central to Tory policy. There is virtually no testing anywhere. The WHO policy that you test, you trace, you isolate, you contain is being TOTALLY ignored by the Johnson/Cummings regime. They are not even testing health workers."

"Admiral Brett Giroir of the spends all of his time coordinating testing deployment and resources deployment from . And what were making clear to governors, and I want the American people to know, is that we will continue to do that. While the president has made it clear that we want the governors to implement testing and deploy testing where they deem its most appropriate in their state, were going to continue to fully partner with states around the country to increase the supply, to make sure that they have the reagents and the test kits necessary to perform those tests. But I want to say again, it is truly -- its a tribute to the presidents leadership that early on in this process he brought in the top commercial labs in the country. They formed an alliance. And we went from one month ago to 80,000 tests being done to four million tests being completed as of yesterday. Well continue to increase that. Well continue to make governors aware of that."

"The timing couldn’t have been worse. In March, just as Thailand’s coronavirus outbreak began to ramp up, three hospitals in Bangkok announced that they had suspended testing for the virus because they had run out of reagents. Thai researchers rushed to help the country’s clinical laboratories meet the demand. Looking for affordable and easy-to-use tests, systems biologist Chayasith (Tao) Uttamapinant at the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology in Rayong reached out to an old acquaintance: CRISPR co-discoverer Feng Zhang, who had been developing an assay for the coronavirus inspired by the gene-editing technology. Within days, Uttamapinant received starter kits from Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and tested them on samples from a hospital in Bangkok. “The kits are quite cheap and work well,” says Uttamapinant, who hopes to get the test approved for clinical use by the end of the year. He has teamed up with biochemists in Thailand to produce the testing reagents locally, with Zhang on standby for support. “This effort to produce everything locally will have a lasting impact on infectious-disease monitoring and diagnosis in this part of the globe,” says Uttamapinant."

"This is putting thousands of health workers at risk, and essentially abandoning hundreds of them to catch the virus, to spread the virus, and in many cases to die. The experts in a health emergency are, of course, the health workers. But they are silenced by the Tories and the NHS bosses — threatened with dismissal if caught telling the truth to the public they serve — as if we were living in Stalinist China."