To meet our ongoing nationwide testing needs we need to focus on the supply chain. It’s a complex set of instruments, reagents, and lab supplies that make this work. We’ve had concerns about availability of RNA extraction kits, also challenges with swabs. politico.com/news/2020/03/1…
The weak link in supply chains are often low margin products, where there's consolidated suppliers and relative under-investment -- precisely because the products are lower margin and therefore don't attract investment capital. Swabs could be a weak link in broadening testing.
To keep up with testing demand, industry and regulators need to work together to identify alternate supplies and efficiently validate their use across the many different testing systems we’re now standing up for #COVID19.
South Korea, which is seeing its epidemic ebb, has tested about one in 200 South Korean citizens as part of the country's aggressive screening program. This effort has helped the nation contain spread while other countries lost control of their epidemics. wsj.com/articles/how-s…
The high throughput platforms to dramatically scale testing for #COVID19 are now available after recent FDA approvals. They'll be rolled out this week. Key to using screening as a tool to blunt epidemic spread is the delivery systems, and supplies, to allow widespread testing.
