New saliva-based coronavirus test unveiled with 'simplified' process
When the coronavirus outbreak first began in the U.S., the surge highlighted a critical flaw in the U.S. health care system: a lack of available testing kits.
Since then, companies and scientists all over the country have stepped up to try to make up for the shortfall. The FDA recently approved a saliva-based COVID-19 test developed by the genomics lab at Rutgers University, and it’s expected to roll out on Wednesday.
‘We’ve simplified this so that it is literally a 24-to-48-hour process’
Jason Feldman, the CEO of Vault Health, one of the companies that will have its patients using these tests during telehealth appointments, explained that the process for taking a test through Vault Health’s services is fairly simple.
If someone is experiencing coronavirus symptoms, they fill out a questionnaire on the company’s website, and then are sent a test kit overnight. Once they receive their kit, they log on to one of Vault Health’s Zoom “waiting rooms” where a practitioner is there to monitor the test.
“So literally, they will meet a practitioner, show their ID, and then they will spit into this tube, seal the tube, and put it back in the prepaid overnight to go back to our partners at Rutgers University, who will complete the test processing and deliver the results,” Feldman said on Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade. “We’ve simplified this so that it is literally a 24-to-48-hour process. And we can do it across the United States.”
Feldman described the saliva-based test as a “self-collection device” that’s part of a “completely monitored process” that helps accomplish two important things.
“It keeps practitioner and patient away from each other, which is very, very, very good, when we know that people who are potentially exposed could continue to spread the virus,” Feldman said. “And then it’s also preserving the use of very, very scarce PPE — this protective gear that we know is in limited supply. Those two reasons alone, and the FDA’s guidance on the Rutgers test, give us great confidence that we’re doing not only the right thing, but the best thing for the country.”
He also stressed that these aren’t technically at-home tests since they’re medically supervised.
“There is a really good reason that the FDA stopped at-home self testing,” Feldman said. “It’s dangerous, because using a swab test, the traditional test where you’re sticking a swab in your nose or in your throat, is really hard to do by yourself.”
‘This is a really important answer to get very quickly’
There are more 580,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S., although this number is likely higher due to the testing kit shortfall.