As you know, vaccines that help our natural immune system block COVID-19 have been developed at lightning speed and hopefully will be distributed quickly, too. It’s a real testament to what modern science and technology can do if we put our minds to it.
But vaccines are not the only medical technology being developed at a mind-boggling pace. Home testing is on its way, too: The FDA has approved the first such test available without a prescription, which should start to become available next month. It’s not cheap – $30 or so – and may not be covered by insurance, but it’s still great.
As the amount of COVID-19 circulating in the community keeps going up, having a good at-home test would make almost as much difference to our lives as having a good vaccine.
Consider my case right now. I picked up my car at the garage last week but forgot to bring a mask. All I did was run into the office, grab my keys and leave a check, get a thumbs-up from the repair bay, then bolt out after giving the owner’s dog a quick pat.
I was inside two minutes, tops. Surely that’s no problem.
Unfortunately, those guys are too casual about COVID; they don’t wear masks. It’s conceivable that I inhaled a virus floating around in the over-heated office or picked up one from the dog or the pen that I used to sign the check. Maybe SARS- CoV2 is infiltrating cells in my respiratory system even as I type.
Having a quick, at-home test to find out would be a game-changer.
But now come the caveats. There are always caveats.
The test, from an Australian company called Ellume, is an antigen test. It doesn’t detect the actual virus but proteins produced by the virus, called antigens, in contrast to a PCR test, which detects the genetic material of the virus itself.
All quick-response tests are antigen tests because their results can be read via a quick chemical reaction, similar to an at-home pregnancy test. PCR tests require specialized laboratory equipment.
However, antigen tests are not as accurate as PCR tests. In particular, they are more likely to give false positives – to say you have been infected when you actually haven’t.
Also, you and I are not trained to gather tissue samples. If we get grossed out while swabbing our nose for mucus before doing the test we could miss antigens and give ourselves a false negative result.
The FDA says Ellume’s chemistry and design have overcome enough of these problems for its test to be useful and valuable. I believe them and will get one when I can. But I also know that these tests – all tests – are imperfect. They can help ease uncertainty but they won’t let us toss away masks and “go back to normal,” whatever that means. We need to keep being careful until at least half the population is fully vaccinated, which isn’t going to happen until summer at the earliest.
The COVID-19 numbers we’re seeing in New Hampshire right now reflect what happens when we don’t take this pandemic seriously enough. We are falling short on virtually all of the metrics that the Monitor has been tracking since the start of summer.
Goal 1: No sustained increase in number of new hospitalizations related to COVID-19. Have we met this goal? No.
The number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 has almost doubled this month and is far higher than it was at the peak of the spring surge.
Goal 2: A two-week drop in new cases. Have we met this goal? No.
Goal 3: Fewer than four new cases per 100,000 people each day, or 54 new cases a day. Have we met this goal? No.
The two-week average of new cases topped 800 for the first time last week and is still growing. Note that this figure is more accurately described as new positive test results, which reflect tests that had been given over multiple days preceding each report, but calling it “new cases” is a reasonable compromise.
Goal 4: Conducting at least 150 PCR tests per 100,000 people each day, or 2,000 tests per day. Have we met this goal? Yes.
We’re doing a decent amount of testing – more than 7,000 PCR test results reported every day.
Goal 5: A positive rate of PCR tests below 5%, indicating that we’re doing enough testing to get a good handle on how widespread the virus is. Have we met this goal? No.
Alarmingly, the positive rate of tests has been close to 10% over the past week, indicating that the COVID-19 coronavirus is spreading so fast that we can’t increase testing enough to get a good handle on the extent.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
