Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
DIY Home Tests Can Lead To Abrupt Turn Around In Nation's Health
Boston Globe: Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Sparks Kudos, And Caution
Leading public health experts, frustrated with chronic delays in coronavirus testing, are on a mission to persuade federal regulators to authorize cheap, at-home tests that would deliver results in minutes and could help the country turn the corner on the pandemic. The campaign comes as the US Food and Drug Administration recently adopted guidelines aimed at ensuring accurate results for do-it-yourself COVID-19 tests. While several companies have developed home test kits and are pushing to get them on the market, these scientists say the new thresholds are so strict that few home test kits will be able to meet them. (Lazar, 8/22)
Detroit Free Press: State Signs $42M Contract With COVID-19 Testing Company Under Scrutiny
The state of Michigan signed a $42 million contract in July with a COVID-19 testing company that is under scrutiny in Texas for returning test results too slowly, and is accused of providing unreliable test results to a South Dakota native American tribe. Washington state-based Honu Management Group also may have overstated the scope of its work when it negotiated its Dallas coronavirus testing contract, and claimed to have White House approval it did not have, according to a Dallas Morning News investigation. (Shamus, 8/23)
Kaiser Health News: Trump Is Sending Fast, Cheap COVID Tests To Nursing Homes — But There’s A Hitch
The Trump administration’s latest effort to use COVID-19 rapid tests — touted by one senior official as a “turning point” in arresting the coronavirus’s spread within nursing homes — is running into roadblocks likely to limit how widely they’ll be used. Federal officials are distributing point-of-care antigen tests — which are cheaper and faster than tests that must be run by a lab — to 14,000 nursing homes to increase routine screening of residents and staff. The initial distribution targets nursing homes in hot spots and those with at least three COVID-19 cases, senior Trump administration officials said in July, hailing it as a tool that could root out asymptomatic carriers who might still infect others. (Pradhan, 8/24)
AP: NFL Has 77 Apparently False Positive COVID-19 Tests From Lab
The NFL had 77 positive COVID-19 tests from 11 teams re-examined by a New Jersey lab after false positives, and all those tests came back negative. The league asked the New Jersey lab BioReference to investigate the results, and those 77 tests are being re-tested once more to make sure they were false positives. Among teams reporting false positives, the Minnesota Vikings said they had 12, the New York Jets 10 and the Chicago Bears nine. (Wilner, 8/24)
AP: Experts Flag Risks In India's Use Of Rapid Tests For Virus
In June, India began using cheaper, faster but less accurate tests to scale up testing for the coronavirus — a strategy that the United States is now considering. These rapid tests boosted India’s testing levels nearly five-fold within two months. But government numbers suggest some parts of the country might have become over reliant on the faster tests, which can miss infections. Experts warn that safely using them requires frequent retesting, something that isn’t always happening. (Ghosal and Perrone, 8/23)
