New Saliva Test for COVID-19 Approved by FDA Could Increase Testing Capacity
The number of COVID-19-related deaths nationwide has passed 170,000 and five states have set new records for weekly deaths.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a new saliva test for COVID-19. They say it's "simpler and less expensive" and as little as $10 per test which will increase testing capacity.
The laboratory diagnostic test is called SalivaDirect and was developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.
"This is a huge step forward to make testing more accessible," Chantal Vogels, a Yale postdoctoral fellow, who led the laboratory development and validation along with Doug Brackney, an adjunct assistant clinical professor told Yale News.
"This started off as an idea in our lab soon after we found saliva to be a promising sample type of the detection of SARS-CoV-2, and now it has the potential to be used on a large scale to help protect public health. We are delighted to make this contribution to the fight against Coronavirus."
The Yale researchers said that they are not seeking to commercialize the method. Rather, they want the simplified testing method to help those most in need.
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Meanwhile, a report in the New York Times says new research offers hope.
Unpublished studies say patients who've had even mild cases of the Coronavirus show signs of developing strong, long-term immunity.
Those studies are still in the process of peer review, but experts commissioned by the Times call them "promising" and "exactly what you would hope for."
"This is very promising," Smita Iyer, an immunologist at the University of California, Davis, who is studying immune responses to the Coronavirus in rhesus macaques but was not involved in the new studies told the newspaper. "This calls for some optimism about herd immunity, and potentially a vaccine."
