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What a difference a year makes.
In August 2020, the Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card, a 15-minute, $ 5 rapid test now widely used to detect highly infectious variants. The test is a portable and affordable tool in the fight against COVID-19 infection, as well as a classic example of the Trump administration’s close collaboration with the private sector to develop solutions to complex problems.
Fast forward to August 2021. The New York Times found that Abbott Laboratories management had asked employees to dismantle and destroy thousands of rapid tests before announcing widespread layoffs at their Maine plant.
The reason? A decrease in the importance of testing over the past nine months by the Biden administration.
Innovations in diagnostic testing such as the Abbott BinaxNOW Rapid Test did not happen by accident. At the onset of the pandemic, private companies that could quickly ramp up production worked closely with an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental team of federal experts to guide research, investment, and deployment of new innovations.
Literally a card with chemicals on it, the BinaxNOW test has a sensitivity of 91.7% and specificity of 98.5% to detect an individual’s infectivity in near real time. Shortly after the FDA released the EUA BinaxNOW, the Department of Health and Human Services immediately purchased and deployed the first 150 million tests produced in weekly shipments to historically Black states, nursing homes, colleges and universities, and other vulnerable populations. It made a difference.
The BinaxNOW test was not the first diagnostic test Abbott developed in conjunction with the Trump administration. At the end of March 2020, the company received an EUA for Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test. At the time, the ID NOW was new and in desperate need of expanding testing capacity. Once the FDA issued the emergency clearance, HHS immediately purchased half of its production line and deployed it to every public health laboratory in every state and territory in the United States, including a number increased to help rural and tribal areas that did not have access to COVID lab testing.
pretended lack of widespread availability COVID testing has been a prominent issue during the 2020 presidential campaign. Media coverage has often clouded the Trump administration’s decisions to invest in and expand the diagnostic testing supply chain with suspicion and demagoguery about to how the lack of testing during the global pandemic had failed the American people. When we left office in January 2021, there were 170 million tests available, not including the pooled tests that could have easily doubled if not tripled that total.
One day after taking the oath, President Biden
Joe BidenHenri demoted to tropical depression as he pours rain over northeastern Britain to urge G7 leaders to consider adopting Taliban sanctions: report Five lawmakers to watch before vote room budget key PLUS issued a Executive Decree establish a “COVID-19 Pandemic Screening Council to Ensure Sustainable Public Health Workforce”. As the United States and other countries experience the devastating increase in hospitalizations for people with the highly transmissible delta variant, the Biden Pandemic Testing Council should work transparently with the private sector to ensure the development and the production of diagnostic tests, vaccines and other critical supplies needed to fight COVID-19 and prevent unnecessary destruction of resources.
As COVID variants emerge and spread in unexpected populations, including in children and vaccinated people who have mild or no symptoms, the Biden administration should facilitate a massive distribution of COVID tests to states, schools, nursing homes and hospitals to improve individual medical outcomes. It will also improve the quality of our own data so that we do not have to rely on data collected from Israel and the UK. With increased testing, our public health system will also be able to detect a more accurate number of infections, especially in areas with high community spread by asymptomatic people.
The Biden administration must work closely with private sector companies like Abbott so that our precious resources of time, manpower and federal funding are not wasted during COVID outbreaks and as the medical community is gearing up for another fall and winter of potentially highly transmissible flu mixed with COVID.
Partnerships to ensure a flexible and efficient diagnostic testing ecosystem will increase testing capacity to rapidly diagnose individuals and mitigate emerging epidemics, especially in communities, schools and other high-risk environments. or gathering.
Mia Palmieri Heck previously worked in the US Department of Health and Human Services under President Trump
Donald Trump Kamala Harris Should Offer Vietnam ‘Market Economy’ Status Alabama Rally Supporters Boo Trump After He Tells Them To Get Vaccinated and during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and is now Vice President of External Affairs at the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy.
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