Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “covid-19 testing”
In a highly anticipated study that compares rapid antigen and laboratory PCR approaches for COVID-19 serial screening, researchers affiliated with the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative reported that both testing methods were equally effective in detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection when tests were given on a regular cadence every three days. While individual PCR tests are more …
The following article was published as a letter to Health Care Providers from the FDA on October 7, 2020. The FDA recommends health care providers provide visual (written or video) step-by-step instructions, in addition to verbal instructions, to patients who, in a health care setting, are self-collecting anterior nares (nasal) samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing. Written instructions may be provided on …
“The FDA is reminding the public of the limitations of COVID-19 antibody, or serology, testing and providing additional recommendations about the use of antibody tests in people who received a COVID-19 vaccination.“ Antibody tests can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response. However, …
As we are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit our communities hard. Despite guidelines on co-horting and testing, and our efforts to protect our residents, nursing homes experienced large outbreaks. In a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, a discussion on whether pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission could be the reason. Long-term separation after recovery kept the non-COVID-19 residents …
The effectiveness of coronavirus testing depends not only on the number of tests performed but also on who is getting tested. Testing may be administered for a variety of reasons: to diagnose COVID-19 in symptomatic patients, to detect asymptomatic infection in persons exposed to infection or at high risk of transmitting infection to others (i.e., essential workers), to detect outbreaks …
Timely and reliable testing is important in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Nasopharyngeal swab RT-PCR testing is often used as the main diagnostic test method because it yields early results with moderate sensitivity and excellent specificity. The frequency of complications was extremely low in a study recently published in JAMA Network Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Per the study, all complications seemed …
A New York Department of Health surveyor auditing a Bronx nursing home exposed residents and staff to COVID-19 per a source at Fox News. According to an employee at Pelham Parkway Nursing Home, a team of health department surveyors began auditing the facility on April 5. While department guidance “strongly encourages” all visitors to be tested before entering a nursing …
A robust and responsive testing infrastructure is essential to our success in stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This overview describes current information on the categories of tests used to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection and the intended strategies for use of those tests, including to diagnose infection, to screen in an effort to reduce asymptomatic or presymptomatic …
