#5SmartReads - July 23, 2020

On diagnostics, Aparna, and the stock market

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.