The backlog of Covid19 virus rapid test kits in the United States is caused by a combination of factors. The figure shows a schematic of the COVID19 rapid test.
About 32 million COVID19 (Wuhan pneumonia) virus rapid test kits sent to states by the U.S. federal government in September 2020 are unused and are piling up in storage facilities. They are approaching their six-month expiration date, health officials said.
The excess test devices came from 142 million rapid test devices purchased from Abbott Laboratories. A report in the Wall Street Journal says those test devices cost the U.S. federal government nearly $160 million because they were not used.
According to an Abbott reading, the test takes only 15 to 30 minutes to produce results and “has shown sensitivity of 97.1 percent and specificity of 98.5 percent in clinical studies.” The test is available for a single purchase price of $5.
The Texas Education Agency’s plan to use Abbott’s BinaxNOW kits for rapid COVID19 testing says certain kits will expire as early as late February 2021.
The federal government acquired those tests primarily to reduce infections in institutions such as schools, nursing homes and prisons.
Some states are delaying the use of Abbott’s rapid test-BinaxNOW because state health officials are unsure whether they will continue to accept the government-provided test in favor of using another company’s test.
And Myra Kunas, director of Minnesota’s interim public health laboratory, said the test would be administered by the state. Kunas (Myra Kunas) said, “The demand isn’t there yet.”
News of the backlog of rapid test kits in warehouses came after the U.S. recorded a significant drop in COVID19 cases since mid-January.
According to Atlantic’s COVID19 tracking program, the seven-day average of new cases in the U.S. has dropped nearly 64 percent since Jan. 12. On Friday (Feb. 12), the daily average of new U.S. cases fell below 100,000, reaching a low since November.
The decline in reported infections coincided with an overall decline in testing, which fell 8 percentage points last week, the third consecutive week of declines in the indicator.
However, health officials stressed the importance of testing the population for COVID19, noting that doing so can reduce the rate of transmission of the virus by warning those who may be infected to self-isolate.
“The decline in testing that we’re seeing now is almost certainly due to a combination of reduced demand and reduced availability or accessibility of testing.” the COVID19 tracking project team said.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University) data report that 331 million tests have been collected in the U.S. to date.
The data also show that more than 27 million people in the U.S. have been infected with COVID19 and that more than 485,728 people have died.
According to the National Public Radio (NPR) COVID19 Vaccine Tracker, 4.2 percent of the U.S. population has received two doses of the Wuhan pneumovirus vaccine.
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