3M pairs with MIT to develop a paper-based coronavirus diagnostic test (FierceBiotech)
This is good news. But it also brings up a much bigger issue, as outlined by Michael Mina.
Here’s the TL;DR:
Testing is critical to get a handle on COVID. It’s also less risky and significantly cheaper than developing therapeutics and vaccines, which have a much higher risk of failure and expensive to develop.
Vaccines and therapies are getting billions of dollars from the federal government. 3M and MIT were awarded $500K to prove this paper strip test is scalable.
PCR tests - which we’ve been using to date - are a lot more expensive and have had accuracy issues.
Tests like these - available in schools and businesses and basically everywhere - will help us get a handle on containing COVID and reopening safely.
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