Name: More U.S. Labs Could Be Providing Coronavirus Tests
Brand: scientificamerican.com
SKU: scientificamerican-com-32
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

More U.S. Labs Could Be Providing Coronavirus Tests

preview

A survey of more than 4,000 researchers in the United States suggests that better coordination at an institutional and national level could make hundreds of thousands more tests for coronavirus available.The survey was&nbsp;&nbsp;published on 9 April, revealing that several top university laboratories that have received regulatory approval to process tests for SARS-CoV-2 are operating at half their potential capacity.Testing is urgently needed. Hospitals continue to face delays in providing test results, and nursing homes, homeless shelters and other shared-living facilities report a lack of tests for screening at-risk residents. US officials mainly agree that more testing is needed if they are to loosen social-distancing and lockdown measures.To find out what is preventing molecular-biology laboratories from helping with this effort, Giovanni Paternostro, a biomedical researcher at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California, and Joshua Graff Zivin, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, sent a survey to 35,000 principal investigators who had received grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2018.Of the more than 4,000 researchers who responded within the first week, about 130 were already running tests to detect the new coronavirus. Nearly 1,600 said that they had the main tool needed to run tests, a real-time PCR machine, and operated under the biosafety conditions required for working with pathogenic organisms such as coronavirus. But they were not testing.Both groups—those who are testing and those who could—were asked what they would need to process more tests or to begin testing. Resources such as reagents and funding were a popular response for both groups, as was coordination by the NIH or their own institution. About 95% of labs not currently testing said they needed more information on protocols and regulations, such as the key Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification for providing clinical test results. But 43% of labs currently doing testing said that they could do with more information in these areas as well.Almost 1,000 investigators left comments, with many describing the bottlenecks they face or their interest in assisting with the coronavirus response in other ways. One respondent, George Murphy, a stem-cell biologist who is running a coronavirus-testing operation at the Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts, says the survey and comments made him realize how lucky he was that his administrative leaders were flexible and pushed hard through regulatory hurdles. “Coordination at the institutional level was key,” he says.This article is reproduced with permission and was on April 21 2020.Read more about the coronavirus outbreak&nbsp;.Discover world-changing science. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners.Support science journalism.Thanks for reading Scientific American. Knowledge awaits.Already a subscriber? Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or to continue.Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription.You may cancel at any time.

A survey of more than 4,000 researchers in the United States suggests that better coordination at an institutional and national level could make hundreds of thousands more tests for coronavirus available.The survey was&nbsp;&nbsp;published on 9 April, revealing that several top university laboratories that have received regulatory approval to process tests for SARS-CoV-2 are operating at half their potential capacity.Testing is urgently needed. Hospitals continue to face delays in providing test results, and nursing homes, homeless shelters and other shared-living facilities report a lack...

public

Nature magazine

Amy Maxmen

Awesome discoveries. Expert insights. Science that shapes the world.

scientificamerican.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

More U.S. Labs Could Be Providing Coronavirus Tests

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS