I watched the presser today and I just downloaded the app and sent info to rest of family.
Itâs insane to me that this is the first state, ONLY NOW, offering an app. We just suck at this.
^^tbf, it really is not the first state. North and South Dakota have been using a local app for awhile. But as I predicted back in March, utilization is and will continue to be extremely low.
https://californiahealthline.org/news/covid-tracking-apps-proliferate-but-will-they-really-help/
RI has had an app since May (CrushCovidRI) to help with contact tracing. It is not the same technology, but it does track all of YOUR locations that are >15 minutes for two weeks (dumps old data), keeps all the information privately stored on your phone, and you can choose to share it with contact tracers if you test positive. It triggers your memory about where youâve been/who youâve been with in the past 2 weeks. While it is more basic in that it doesnât identify individuals that have been near you, honestly, it might be more useful because the adoption rates are quite low. This Virginia app is only really helpful if there is high adoption. Unfortunately, only 7% of the population in RI has downloaded its app after 3 months of pretty heavy promotion. Really either style app is only helpful if lots of people are using it. Not sure whatâs wrong with peopleâthey clearly designed these with privacy in mind, not overreach, so everyone should just use it, in my opinion.
If there were relatively high adoption rates, Iâd think the VA style app seems more useful in alerting/identifying strangers (ie some random person you sat next to on a long bus ride). The RI style seems better at identifying/alerting people who are not strangers, but who may not have downloaded the app (ie , "I forgot that 11 days ago I spent 25 minutes in my neighborâs backyard closely chatting with these 3 people). In the RI version, those 3 people donât need to have their phones on them or the app downloaded to be identifiedâthe fact that the covid-positive person is reminded that they were at that location would help them report those people to the contact tracers. I guess ideally youâd combine both features, and even more ideally youâd get 50%+ of the population to use the darn thing!!
Originally, several high profile Governors were on board with the idea of a tracing app. Gov Newsom in CA mentioned an electronic tracing app a few times last spring in his pressers, but he has been silent on that issue for quite awhile. Not sure why; the State Department of Health wonât comment on it.
I think a contact tracing app would be helpful, although I agree itâs only as useful as the number of people who use it. I know of several colleges that are mandating a similar system for students to keep track of the incidence of cases on campus.
The National Institutes of Health is investing $248.7 million in new technologies to address challenges associated with COVID-19 testing (which detects SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). NIHâs Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative has awarded contracts to seven biomedical diagnostic companies to support a range of new lab-based and point-of-care tests that could significantly increase the number, type and availability of tests by millions per week as early as September 2020. With national demand estimated to be millions more tests per day above current levels, these technologies are expected to make a significant contribution to expanding the nationâs testing capacity.
https://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/nih-delivering-new-covid-19-testing-technologies-meet-us-demand
Isnât that what âpoint of careâ testing is:
"Lab-based and point-of-care tests that could significantly increase the number, type and availability of tests by millions per week as early as September 2020. "
Isnât that what âpoint of careâ testing is:
"Lab-based and point-of-care tests that could significantly increase the number, type and availability of tests by millions per week as early as September 2020. "
[/quote]
No, the tests do not require a lab, taken at home with saliva. The objective is to stop transmissions by detecting infectiousness not infections.
Www.rapidtests.org
No, the tests do not require a lab, taken at home with saliva. The objective is to stop transmissions by detecting infectiousness not infections.
Www.rapidtests.org
[/quote]
But it says Lab-based and point-of-care tests⊠What Iâm asking is perhaps they are finding more lab based AND ALSO [rapid] point of care testsâŠ
Edited to add - yes, thatâs exactly what the article says, they are investing in both (FINALLY):
âThese technologies will help deliver faster results from labs and more and more test results within minutes at the point of care, which is especially important for settings like schools and nursing homes.â
âŠ
Four of the technologies introduce innovations in laboratory-based testing technologies including next generation sequencing, CRISPR and integrated microfluidic chips that could dramatically increase testing capacity and throughput while reducing the time to receive test results. ** Three technologies use platforms to provide nucleic acid and viral antigen tests that can give rapid results at the point of care, such as offices, manufacturing facilities, childcare centers, nursing homes and schools. Additionally, some of the tests offer more convenient sampling, such as saliva testing. **
Article on vaccine development:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/30/a-huge-experiment-how-the-world-made-so-much-progress-on-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-fast/
The article describes how vaccine development is being done much more quickly than with previous vaccines.
USA TODAY
How to stop the COVID-19 pandemic? Harvard doc says cheap tests are the answer.
Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY 1 hr ago
How to stop the COVID-19 pandemic? Harvard doc says cheap tests are the answer.
Dr. Michael Mina thinks thereâs a simple way to beat back COVID-19: fast, cheap tests, taken at home every day or two.
Right now, tests are designed for medical purposes. They identify whether someone with symptoms has COVID-19 or not. But they miss â according to Minaâs estimate â 97% of people when they are most infectious.
COVID-19, we now know, is most contagious in the first few days â just before a person shows symptoms and in the few days after symptoms start, if they ever do. Waiting until someone has symptoms before scheduling them for a test, means they wonât know they were contagious until they arenât.
In recent weeks, Mina, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been lobbying heavily for fast, cheap, at-home tests, hoping to get the federal government to fund their development and remove barriers to their approval. Heâs spoken with senators, foreign leaders, and company executives, who share this idea, but is increasingly frustrated by the administrationâs inaction.
On Friday, he laid out his vision to reporters on a group Zoom call. What follows is an edited version of what he said.
Whatâs the difference between current COVID-19 tests and what youâre envisioning?
The tests that are being deployed now are like deluxe espresso machines. These are tests that require instrumentation. Thereâll be a big, big startup cost to get it going and each individual test will be expensive. They will have a difficult time getting the scale to where it needs to be to make an impact on a population level. What I really want is the instant coffee version. I want a $1 thing versus a $20 thing.
How can tests be used to stop transmission of COVID-19?
The way to do that is to use cheap tests that are highly accurate to detect somebody at the moment theyâre transmitting. People can act on it, because theyâre getting immediate results. I want them to take them every single day or every other day.
How could they act on it?
If we can get a test that everyone wakes up â just like they put in their contact lenses âthey take a test. And if it turns positive, they stay home. And they take a test the next day and they stay home until the test turns negative, or for a set number of days, maybe 7 days.
That alone, if everyoneâs doing it, or even just a majority of people are doing it, it will stop the vast majority of transmission and it will cause these outbreaks to disappear in a matter of weeks. We donât have to wait for a vaccine.
You think it would make that much of a difference?
We could reduce maybe by 90-95% transmission in this country in the next few weeks if everyone could have one of these tests tomorrow. Of course, thatâs not at the moment possible, but it could be if the federal government were treating this with the same urgency that theyâre treating a vaccine, which may or may not even work.
What do you think the government should be doing?
(The government should) put $1 billion into really pushing the technology for $1 paper strip tests that can be printed in the millions, which they can be, and get a package of 50 in every Americanâs hands over the next month â or not even every American â it could just be Texas, Arizona and Florida right now, because those are the states that are seeding infections to other states.
Why donât these tests exist already?
Weâre allowing red tape and this archaic view â we have so defunded and under-appreciated public health in this country for so many years that we literally donât have a recognition of the fact that there could be a test whose main goal is public health and not clinical medicine. Everything is wrapped up in insurance reimbursements and FDA regulations as diagnostics. It takes a whole rethinking of what a test that somebody might use looks like and how itâs defined.
So, this is a regulatory problem?
Iâm usually not against regulation, but itâs just gotten so extreme here, and itâs truly been hindering every step of the way our ability to test our way out of this virus since February. The current landscape is bottlenecking these companies that could have a cheap test today into producing a more expensive espresso machine, because they canât actually legally use the instant coffee.
Until the regulatory landscape changes, these companies have no reason to try to bring (a fast, cheap, at-home test) to market. So, a lot of them are just kind of sitting on it. Or theyâre trying to spend more time and more money to better and better optimize tests, which might take months. My fear is that what will come out of it at the end of those months is a test that does meet FDA approval, but thatâs too expensive and too complicated to scale and use for everyone.
How do you answer people who criticize cheap tests as being less precise or reliable than the current tests?
A lot of people are wasting time trying to figure out how to get instant coffee to be as good as espresso. Theyâre different things.
Do you have any financial stake in any of the companies making these tests?
I have no financial ties or any other connection to any of these companies. Iâm truly just basing this on science.
And you really think this is the best hope for getting a handle on the pandemic?
We donât have a vaccine tomorrow. We donât have anything but shutting down the economy and keeping schools closed. This can work. This is a tool that tomorrow could start to go into production and within a few weeksâ time could start to change the whole course of outbreaks in major cities in America and in so doing, make all of the United States safer.
Not sure is this is about the same tests.
The paper strip tests are the same basic technology â antigen testing â but even simpler. I think the tests with the shortages are swab tests that still require a test kit and might take 20 minutes or so for a result. I think the idea of the paper strips is that itâs pretty much standalone, and probably results with a few minutes.
Here some other articles explaining this idea:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/radical-shift-testing-strategy-needed-reopen-schools-and-businesses-researchers-say
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/rapid-Covid-tests.html
If it takes a swab and a test tube and requires waiting for 15 or 30 minutes for results⊠itâs still not feasible for daily testing.
If itâs a matter of licking a paper strip that is going to show results by changing color in 5 minutes or less⊠then it becomes very feasible.
Low-cost measurement of facemask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech
Abstract
Mandates for mask use in public during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, worsened by global shortage of commercial supplies, have led to widespread use of homemade masks and mask alternatives. It is assumed that wearing such masks reduces the likelihood for an infected person to spread the disease, but many of these mask designs have not been tested in practice. We have demonstrated a simple optical measurement method to evaluate the efficacy of masks to reduce the transmission of respiratory droplets during regular speech. In proof-of-principle studies, we compared a variety of commonly available mask types and observed that some mask types approach the performance of standard surgical masks, while some mask alternatives, such as neck fleece or bandanas, offer very little protection. Our measurement setup is inexpensive and can be built and operated by non-experts, allowing for rapid evaluation of mask performance during speech, sneezing, or coughing.
Results
We tested 14 commonly available masks or masks alternatives, one patch of mask material, and a professionally fit-tested N95 mask (see Fig. 2 and Table 1 for details). For reference, we recorded control trials where the speaker wore no protective mask or covering. Each test was performed with the same protocol. The camera was used to record a video of approximately 40 s length to record droplets emitted while speaking. The first 10 s of the video serve as baseline. In the next 10 s, the mask wearer repeated the sentence âStay healthy, peopleâ five times (speech), after which the camera kept recording for an additional 20 s (observation). For each mask and for the control trial, this protocol was repeated 10 times. We used a computer algorithm (see Materials and Methods) to count the number of particles within each video.
snip
We measured a droplet transmission fraction ranging from below 0.1% (fitted N95 mask) to 110% (fleece mask, see discussion below) relative to the control trials. In Fig. 3 (B), the time evolution of detected droplets is shown for four representative examples (surgical, cotton5, bandana, and the control trial) tested by the first speaker â the data for all tested masks is shown in Supplementary Fig. S3. The solid curves indicate the droplet transmission rate over time. For the control trial (green curve), the five distinct peaks correspond to the five repetitions of the operator speaking. In the case of speaking through a mask, there is a physical barrier, which results in a reduction of transmitted droplets and a significant delay between speaking and detecting particles. In effect, the mask acts as a temporal low pass filter, smoothens the droplet rate over time, and reduces the overall transmission. For the bandana (red curve), the droplet rate is merely reduced by a factor of two and the repetitions of the speech are still noticeable. The effect of the cotton mask (orange curve) is much stronger. The speech pattern is no longer recognizable and most of the droplets, compared to the control trial, are suppressed. The curve for the surgical mask is not visible on this scale. The shaded areas for all curves display the cumulative particle count over time: the lower the curve, the more droplets are blocked by the mask. Fig. 3 (B) shows the droplet count for the four masks measured by one speaker; Supplementary Fig. S4 shows the data for all four speakers using identical masks.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083
Thanks! Iâm glad I jumped on the surgical mask bandwagon now that they are available at Costco. To me, they are the most comfortable and according to this, the most effective.
@suzyQ7 --I saw those at Costco (actually bought them) but took them back before taking them home because the box says not for clinical use, which made me question their filtration effectiveness. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I wanted to buy them but they said they were made in China so I worried about that.