The tests were developed by California-based company Cepheid and will be shipped to U.S. facilities by March 30, according to an FDA announcement. However, right now, the tests are likely only going to be used in a hospital setting, where a patient is already in an emergency room or hospital triage wing and needs to be diagnosed rapidly, STAT reported.
The U.S. has been plagued by a severe shortage of tests, which allowed the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to spread undetected for weeks. Test kits initially sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were faulty, and for weeks the government forbade local labs from developing their own kits.
Testing has ramped up significantly in the past two weeks, and as a result, the number of confirmed cases in the country has skyrocketed. As of Saturday (March 21), the U.S. had logged more than 24,000 cases, more than half in the state of New York.
As nearly every country in the world races to diagnose and contain new cases, the U.S. is now facing competition for supplies, such as swabs and chemical reagents, that are needed to run the tests.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-rapid-test.html
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