Mayo Clinic officials said Tuesday that the health giant has enough testing capacity to meet Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz‘s benchmarks to reopen businesses after a weeks-long near-shutdown over the coronavirus pandemic.
The Post Bulletin reports on the announcement by Mayo’s Dr. William Morice, who chairs the clinic’s Department of the Department of Laboratory Medicine. Morice said Mayo could produce 8,000 daily molecular or diagnostic tests to detect infected individuals as well as 10,000 serological tests that can screen for patients who already had the disease.Both types of tests are considered crucial to a loosening statewide restrictions that have largely kept Minnesotans in their homes for nearly three weeks now. Since the coronavirus can be easily spread by infected people before symptoms develop and a vaccine is still months or years away, experts say mass testing is needed — possibly for a long time — to keep outbreaks from getting out of control.
Mayo’s capacity would seem to meet a target set by Walz earlier this week. The governor challenged state officials to increase the state’s testing capacity to 40,000 per week or more — acknowledging that the goal would be a “hard lift” because, due to widespread shortages of reagents and other supplies needed for testing, Minnesota has only done about 40,000 tests total since the pandemic began. Mayo, meanwhile, has conducted about 20,000 tests in Minnesota and 60,000 elsewhere in the country.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm has previously said that Mayo would have an expanded role in the state’s mass-testing strategy.
Testing is just one aspect of a long-term strategy of dealing with the coronavirus until a vaccine is developed. Protective gear for testers is also in short supply and could hold up a broad rollout of the effort.
Minnesota is also working on building up a corps of public health officers who would conduct contact tracing on infected patients, which is needed to find and quarantine other people they may have infected. Such strategies have been effective in Asian countries that have better controlled the coronavirus than the United States.
https://www-bizjournals-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2020/04/15/mayo-says-it-can-test-enough-minnesotans-to-end.amp.html
The Post Bulletin reports on the announcement by Mayo’s Dr. William Morice, who chairs the clinic’s Department of the Department of Laboratory Medicine. Morice said Mayo could produce 8,000 daily molecular or diagnostic tests to detect infected individuals as well as 10,000 serological tests that can screen for patients who already had the disease.Both types of tests are considered crucial to a loosening statewide restrictions that have largely kept Minnesotans in their homes for nearly three weeks now. Since the coronavirus can be easily spread by infected people before symptoms develop and a vaccine is still months or years away, experts say mass testing is needed — possibly for a long time — to keep outbreaks from getting out of control.
Mayo’s capacity would seem to meet a target set by Walz earlier this week. The governor challenged state officials to increase the state’s testing capacity to 40,000 per week or more — acknowledging that the goal would be a “hard lift” because, due to widespread shortages of reagents and other supplies needed for testing, Minnesota has only done about 40,000 tests total since the pandemic began. Mayo, meanwhile, has conducted about 20,000 tests in Minnesota and 60,000 elsewhere in the country.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm has previously said that Mayo would have an expanded role in the state’s mass-testing strategy.
Testing is just one aspect of a long-term strategy of dealing with the coronavirus until a vaccine is developed. Protective gear for testers is also in short supply and could hold up a broad rollout of the effort.
Minnesota is also working on building up a corps of public health officers who would conduct contact tracing on infected patients, which is needed to find and quarantine other people they may have infected. Such strategies have been effective in Asian countries that have better controlled the coronavirus than the United States.
https://www-bizjournals-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2020/04/15/mayo-says-it-can-test-enough-minnesotans-to-end.amp.html
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