Scientists Identify Growing Number of COVID-19 Variants, But Not All Clinical Laboratories Have the Capability to Test for Variants

Fear that immunity-resistant mutations of SARS-CoV-2 will emerge are real and the scientific community is paying close attention Detection of an increasing number of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus raises the possibility that a new strain of COVID-19 might emerge that brings new problems to the management of the pandemic. Public health officials and clinical laboratory scientists are on the alert to determine if any new COVID-19 variant is more virulent or more easily transmissible....

Harvard ‘Roadmap’ to Recovery Calls for ‘Massive’ Increase in Clinical Laboratory COVID-19 Testing in Four-Phase Blueprint for Reopening Economy

Report’s authors claim the US needs to be testing 20-million people per day in order to achieve ‘full pandemic resilience’ by August Medical laboratory scientists and clinical laboratory leaders know that the US’ inability to provide widespread diagnostic testing to detect SARS-CoV-2—the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 illness—in the early stages of the outbreak was a major public health failure. Now a Harvard University report argues the US will need to deliver five million tests...

Roche CEO Severin Schwan Questions the Ethics of Certain Companies Making COVID-19 Antibody Tests and Calls Some of These Clinical Laboratory Tests a ‘Disaster’

Schwan’s concerns about inaccurate or unreliable COVID-19 serology tests were supported when the FDA issued more restrictive rules for these medical laboratory tests on May 4 Last month, Roche Group CEO Severin Schwan characterized some COVID-19 antibody tests as a “disaster” and questioned the ethics of some manufacturers of these tests. During a conference call with investors about the company’s first-quarter results, Schwan said of the recently-launched COVID-19 antibody assays, “These...

Tech Companies Suggest Ways Location Tracking Could Help Health Authorities Fight the COVID-19 Coronavirus by Identifying People Who May Need Clinical Laboratory Testing

Privacy concerns have one tech giant suggesting alternatives to sharing potentially identifiable location tracking data Expect an interesting debate on the use of location tracking as a way to manage this and future pandemics. It is a debate that has implications for clinical laboratories. After all, if location tracking identifies individuals who may have been exposed to an infectious disease, will health authorities want those individuals to be immediately tested? Location tracking has been...

A Tale of Two Countries: As the US Ramps Up Medical Laboratory Tests for COVID-19, the United Kingdom Falls Short

Media reports in the United Kingdom cite bad timing and centralization of public health laboratories as reasons the UK is struggling to meet testing goals Clinical pathologists and medical laboratories in UK and the US function within radically different healthcare systems. However, both countries faced similar problems deploying widespread diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. And the differences between America’s private healthcare system and the UK’s...
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