Imagine that when you got sick, you knew exactly what disease you were suffering from, and therefore you had an idea of how it spreads and how to treat it. This could be a reality in the future with the prevalence of at-home testing for viruses other than COVID.
Doctor. Lisa Maragakis Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She says that convenient and easy-to-use home tests for COVID-19 were a game changer during the pandemic.
“And it really raises the question of why we don’t have more widespread at-home testing for other respiratory viruses such as influenza or respiratory syncytial virus RSV,” Dr. Margakis said.
the so-calledTripitakaLast year highlighted the need for at-home testing for other viruses causing COVID-19, influenza, and RSV.
“A new challenge in the respiratory virus season is the co-transmission of influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” said Dr. Margakis said. “And since we have treatments that are different for different viruses, we need to know that we can’t make the kind of empirical judgments or diagnoses that we were able to make in past flu seasons.”
Dr. Maragakis says the science exists to create these types of tests, but they are not yet widely available. global life science company labcorp announced emergency-use authorization last year from the FDA for home collection kit which simultaneously detects COVID-19, influenza or RSV.
If you have insurance, you can order one online that will be shipped to your home free of charge. Without insurance, it’s $169 dollars.
However, it is not a rapid test. This is a PCR test that you send to a lab, so it takes several days for the results. As at-home testing becomes more prevalent, Dr. Maragakis says public health leaders will need to keep up with new challenges.
“We know, right now, that the publicly reported numbers for COVID-19 are just the tip of the iceberg because so many people are being diagnosed by in-home tests and those data are not factored into the reported numbers. occur,” Dr. Maragakis said.
Dr Maragakis says one solution may be to develop a way for people to self-report data from at-home tests. A second limitation is that not everyone can use the test correctly, and results can be inaccurate. Until health companies can provide convenient at-home tests for other viruses, Dr. Maragakis says your health care provider still provides the most accurate test results.
