Thanks for the article. I had an idea related to your category number 2 Triage and manage medical care remotely which I also posted to another forum article as a comment [Please delete this comment in either of the articles if it is unnecessary in two places] :
If it were possible to make a home test kit for COVID, I think that would be helpful. By home test kit I mean an arrangement where people could order these tests by phone or from Internet and they would be mailed to them. Then the person would proceed to take a test sample according to the instructions in the kit and mail it back to the laboratory. The laboratory would test the sample and give the person the results via phone or web.
This kind of arrangement would allow people suspecting that they might have COVID to self-quarantine until they have a certainty (or near certainty since no test is perfect) whether they have the disease or not. Thus, it would lead to less people being exposed to potential early-stage COVID carriers and hinder the disease from spreading. Importantly, it would also protect the health care workers as they would have to come to contact with so many potential COVID carriers.
There is a lot of discussion in the literature about setting up local testing centers, and a significant drawback is that even staffed with nurses and trained volunteers, there are real quality control and process issues. Given that, I can’t imagine that home testing wouldn’t have far larger problems. For example, if samples weren’t gathered and handled exactly correctly, I’d expect the false negative rates could be incredibly high, and people who would otherwise self-isolate or get tested correctly would assume they could go out.
Thanks for the article. I had an idea related to your category number 2 Triage and manage medical care remotely which I also posted to another forum article as a comment [Please delete this comment in either of the articles if it is unnecessary in two places] :
If it were possible to make a home test kit for COVID, I think that would be helpful. By home test kit I mean an arrangement where people could order these tests by phone or from Internet and they would be mailed to them. Then the person would proceed to take a test sample according to the instructions in the kit and mail it back to the laboratory. The laboratory would test the sample and give the person the results via phone or web.
This kind of arrangement would allow people suspecting that they might have COVID to self-quarantine until they have a certainty (or near certainty since no test is perfect) whether they have the disease or not. Thus, it would lead to less people being exposed to potential early-stage COVID carriers and hinder the disease from spreading. Importantly, it would also protect the health care workers as they would have to come to contact with so many potential COVID carriers.
There is a lot of discussion in the literature about setting up local testing centers, and a significant drawback is that even staffed with nurses and trained volunteers, there are real quality control and process issues. Given that, I can’t imagine that home testing wouldn’t have far larger problems. For example, if samples weren’t gathered and handled exactly correctly, I’d expect the false negative rates could be incredibly high, and people who would otherwise self-isolate or get tested correctly would assume they could go out.