Remember back in the day, you would sniffle, and someone would say “allergies?” Now if you sniffle everyone stares at you like you have the plague. Thank you, COVID! But isn’t it time to step back and say, “yes I have allergies” and stop running to grab a COVID self-test kit? I don’t know about you, but I am seriously …
In a highly anticipated study that compares rapid antigen and laboratory PCR approaches for COVID-19 serial screening, researchers affiliated with the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative reported that both testing methods were equally effective in detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection when tests were given on a regular cadence every three days. While individual PCR tests are more …
The following article was published as a letter to Health Care Providers from the FDA on October 7, 2020. The FDA recommends health care providers provide visual (written or video) step-by-step instructions, in addition to verbal instructions, to patients who, in a health care setting, are self-collecting anterior nares (nasal) samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing. Written instructions may be provided on …
“The FDA is reminding the public of the limitations of COVID-19 antibody, or serology, testing and providing additional recommendations about the use of antibody tests in people who received a COVID-19 vaccination.“ Antibody tests can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response. However, …
As we are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit our communities hard. Despite guidelines on co-horting and testing, and our efforts to protect our residents, nursing homes experienced large outbreaks. In a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, a discussion on whether pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission could be the reason. Long-term separation after recovery kept the non-COVID-19 residents …
The effectiveness of coronavirus testing depends not only on the number of tests performed but also on who is getting tested. Testing may be administered for a variety of reasons: to diagnose COVID-19 in symptomatic patients, to detect asymptomatic infection in persons exposed to infection or at high risk of transmitting infection to others (i.e., essential workers), to detect outbreaks …
Timely and reliable testing is important in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Nasopharyngeal swab RT-PCR testing is often used as the main diagnostic test method because it yields early results with moderate sensitivity and excellent specificity. The frequency of complications was extremely low in a study recently published in JAMA Network Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Per the study, all complications seemed …
A New York Department of Health surveyor auditing a Bronx nursing home exposed residents and staff to COVID-19 per a source at Fox News. According to an employee at Pelham Parkway Nursing Home, a team of health department surveyors began auditing the facility on April 5. While department guidance “strongly encourages” all visitors to be tested before entering a nursing …
A robust and responsive testing infrastructure is essential to our success in stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This overview describes current information on the categories of tests used to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection and the intended strategies for use of those tests, including to diagnose infection, to screen in an effort to reduce asymptomatic or presymptomatic …
