
Tell HN: Put all effort into mass testing to stop Covid-19 - eveningcoffee
This is a non-expert perspective. Please feel free to criticize the naivety of it but I believe that it has some substance that is worth considering.<p>I have been thinking what could be an effective strategy to avoid wider outbreak without throwing a huge wrench into economic gears.<p>It appears that we can&#x27;t necessarily expect an effective treatment or a vaccine soon. This would be possibly the most effective solution.<p>Another solution that has been currently implemented is a widespread quarantine. It does not appear to be fully effective and will cause huge economical cost. The last point makes the deciders to hesitate when considering this option. I am really concerned that the world economy may become halt because of wider implementation of quarantines. Imagine the world when everything is on short supply. The effect to the monetary system would be devastating.<p>I thought about other possible solutions today in reflection of recent outbreak in Italy and realized that what is missed is more up to date data about the spread of the virus. Currently we are only reacting and we are reacting too late.<p>We already have a test to verify the presence of the Covid-19. I think what we actually need to effectively fight against it is a mass implementation of self testing kits among the all populace that must be used daily to report back the results.<p>First effect of this is reduction of fear and the second effect is the possibility to respond more rapidly to smaller outbreaks to avoid wider silent spread.<p>In principle the kit does not even have to detect Covid-19 directly but only if there is a viral infection or not. Then the specific case could be handled by a medical team to more precisely analyze the situation.<p>I believe that national states should put their full economic strength into implementing this solution because this will save lives and will keep the society functioning.
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jnbiche
Having easy, open access to testing kits _would_ be helpful, but unfortunately
it's not feasible: the test kits are already in short supply, and it would be
impossible within the next few months to scale up to providing 300 million
tests per day or even per week, and that would be for the US alone. There will
almost certainly be a shortage of the reagents needed for quite some time.

Only 4 states plus the CDC presently have the ability to test for Covid-19 in
centralized testing centers:
[https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-coronovirus-
test.html](https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-coronovirus-test.html) So we
are far, far, far away from deploying test kits to individual households.

Furthermore, a very large percentage of the population would a) refuse to take
the test on a regular basis, and b) refuse to self-report in the event of a
positive test, because many people are belligerent about quarantine.

If we already had a massive supply of the necessary reagents, and the ability
to quickly scale up manufacturing, your approach might work. But given current
constraints, it's unlikely.

I wonder how microfluidics might some day help to deploy the kind of
household-level testing you are wishing for. Actually, if there's any hope for
your solution, it's probably through this guy's lab + multiple industry
partners, or something similar: [https://www.bioanalysis-
zone.com/2020/01/02/microfluidic-dev...](https://www.bioanalysis-
zone.com/2020/01/02/microfluidic-device-identify-viruses/)

