In the battle against the coronavirus, we may look back on Saturday, August 15, 2020 as a landmark day. The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency approval to a new COVID-19 test, one that is less invasive but just as accurate at the nasal swab. Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration thinks this is a major advancement.
According to the medical website Stat:
“The new test, which is called SalivaDirect and was developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, allows saliva samples to be collected in any sterile container. It is a much less invasive process than the nasal swabs currently used to test for the virus that causes Covid-19, but one that has so far yielded highly sensitive and similar results. The test also avoids a key step that has caused shortages of chemical reagents used in other tests.
The development of the test was funded by the NBA and its players association, according to ESPN.
“The Yale test funded by the league and players’ union is simple enough to be used by labs everywhere provided they go through required accreditation processes, said Nathan Grubaugh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale and one of two senior authors, along with Anne Wyllie, an associate research scientist in epidemiology, behind the saliva studies. Consumers dribble saliva into a narrow tube. Depending on the proximity of the lab, consumers could get results back within a few hours — and definitely within 24 hours, Grubaugh said.”
And the test should cost around $10, far less expensive than current testing, and it means we can significantly increase the number of people who are tested. Slavitt writes on Twitter:
“The cost of the materials are about $4. This test should be very cheap even if you add labor and overhead. Not the $100 for current tests. This is important for the next reason— so important…The most important reason is because the most important testing feature is CADENCE. How frequently can we test people. At a $10 test, you can test every day or every couple days. This is even more important than accuracy. But on accuracy…
“Official data shows 88-94%. If you assume 90% sensitivity, this is the best accuracy (sensitivity) of any saliva test. (It also means if you took it twice, for $20, you would have 99% accuracy).”
Read the FDA release here.
