Antiviral Covid Pills Coming. Will There Be Enough Tests?


Still, antiviral pills increase the risks of an overlooked diagnosis. said Susan Butler-Wu, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. “It’s not just knowing about my condition,” he said. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, this result could give me this really life-saving drug’.”

Antigen tests are generally less prone to false positives, but these errors will become a growing concern as the virus becomes less common. (Ellume, which makes a popular test at home, recently recalled two million test kits On concerns about higher-than-expected rates of false positives.)

Asking patients to take a second confirmatory test, particularly supervised or conducted by a medical professional, can reduce both test and user errors, but may take more time and may not be practical or even currently feasible. Dr. “I don’t know if we have the scale to do that right now,” Butler-Wu said.

In the near term, the biggest challenge with rapid antigen tests will likely be finding them.

Dr. “In the UK you can go to a pharmacy and get a box of seven antigen tests for free,” Bilinski said. “In the US, you need to refresh Walmart’s website to get BinaxNOW tests within 15 minutes of them being in stock.”

Experts said the supply shortage could ease soon. Biden management Took several steps to improve usabilityand a number of testing companies are ramping up production.

“We are optimistic that the production capacity of both the big players like Abbott and Quidel and some of the new smaller players is accelerating at this point,” said molecular biologist Nathaniel Hafer. University of Massachusetts.

But rising cases and holiday gatherings are driving a surge in demand, and the supply of home tests remains unpredictable and unstable. “Usability still fits and starts a bit,” said Gigi Gronvall, a tester at Johns Hopkins University.



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