Innovations in diagnostic testing are key to fighting COVID-19.
Countries that have had initial success in controlling the extent
of viral outbreaks, such as South Korea and Singapore, were rigorous testers. Countries that have had poor
availability and speed of testing have had less success containing
the virus. Public health authorities in North America have said that
key steps in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic are identify, isolate and trace contacts of
carriers. Testing is the gateway step to efficiently determine
which suspected cases to keep in isolation and trace, so it cannot
become a bottleneck.
Building Capacity, Filling the Pipeline
Many governments struggled with testing backlogs, as they worked
to increase testing capacity. As a result, initial testing was
focused on specific, narrow groups, such as persons returning
from a high risk country or that had contact with a known COVID-19
carrier. The undertesting and backlogs in processing of tests led
to
