[News] Only $ 5 ... a "wonderful" decision regarding a rapid Corona examination

[HiTLeR]

 

The World Health Organization announced, on Monday, what it described as "good news", after its agreement with prominent partners on a plan to provide 120 million rapid diagnostic tests for the Coronavirus, to help limited and middle-income countries to bridge the examination gap between them and the richer countries, although the plan is not funded. Fully yet.

The rapid diagnostic tests, which cost $ 5 per test, depend on the triggers of the immune response, and the World Health Organization authorized them for use in emergencies last week.

Its deployment program requires an initial $ 600 million and starts next month to better reach hard-to-reach areas for the PCR tests that are often used in richer countries.

Rapid tests look for triggers of an immune response or proteins on the surface of the virus. They are generally seen as less accurate, but much faster, than amino acid assays, such as BCR, and these latest tests require treatment with laboratory equipment and specialized chemicals, usually taking several days to reach results.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, praised the program as "good news" in the battle against Covid-19, according to the "Associated Press".

"These tests provide reliable results in about 15 to 30 minutes, instead of hours or days, with lower prices and less complex equipment," he said. This will enable the expansion of testing, especially in hard-to-reach areas, which do not have adequate laboratories and do not have enough trained health workers to carry out PCR examinations. ”

"We have an agreement, we have a seed of funding, and now we need full funding to purchase these tests," he added, without clarifying.

For her part, Dr. Katharina Boim, executive director of a nonprofit called the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, is rolling out to 20 countries in Africa and will count on support from groups including the Clinton Health Initiative. She added that the diagnostic tests will be provided through the two companies, "Biosensor" and "Abbott".

This would provide an initial $ 1 million from the company's COVID-19 response mechanism, said Peter Sands, CEO of Global Fund, a partnership working to end pandemics.

He added that the deployment of rapid diagnostic tests would be an "important step" to help contain and combat the virus.

Many rich countries have also faced problems in publishing accurate tests, and the examination itself is not easy, as countries such as France and the United States faced a large overcrowding and many problems in the tests, and it turned out that the rapid checks in Britain and Spain were not accurate.

But the deployment of rapid checks in poorer countries aims to help medical teams know where the virus is spreading, in the hope of following up with containment and taking other measures to control it.

Sands said that high-income countries currently carry out 292 checks per day per 100,000 people, while low-income countries carry out 14 checks per day per 100,000 people.

He added that 120 million tests would represent a "huge increase" in testing capacity, but it still represented a small percentage of what is required in those countries.