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Stanford Health Care has developed a new test for the COVID-19 disease and is now using it to verify suspected cases of the illness at its hospitals. The announcement of the new test comes as Stanford University disclosed on Thursday that it is treating a “few” patients who have tested positive for COVID-19.
The test is being used for patients at Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford who are suspected of being infected with the respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. The COVID-19 disease originated in Wuhan, China, which as of Thursday has infected 95,333 patients and killed 3,282 around the world, according to the World Health Organization. As of Thursday, 20 cases have been reported in Santa Clara County.
The new test, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is different from the test being distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latter is used by county public health departments where samples from patients suspected of having the illness are taken and analyzed. The Stanford test, which was developed by the Stanford Health Care Clinical Virology Laboratory, is being used as an in-house diagnostic test that can rapidly identify people with the illness. It is expected to deliver results within 12 to 24 hours, according to a press release by Stanford Medicine.
Clinical virologist Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, associate professor of pathology and infectious diseases at the Stanford School of Medicine, and his team began working on the test in late January. They spent February validating and confirming their test results.
“The test successfully identified the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in positive samples without cross-reacting with the seasonal coronaviruses or other common respiratory viruses, including influenza,” Pinsky said in the press release.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric and infections diseases at the Stanford School of Medicine, said in a phone interview on Thursday that the new test “is a fabulous test,” but it is not being offered to everyone who wants it at this time. Staff will determine who needs to undergo the test, she said.
Read our latest updates on local coronavirus cases here.
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• https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2020/03/03/think-you-have-coronavirus-dont-run-to-the-hospital-or-urgent-care Think you have coronavirus? Don’t run to the hospital or urgent care]
Will our health insurance plans cover this test or will they demand thousands of dollars per person?
Why not ASK your (particular) “health insurance plan,” rather than throwing the question out to a forum of random readers?
What certification did this test achieve
I am just being cautious
It’s been FDA approved. What other certifications are there?
This is an interesting news story but don’t get your medical advice from the comment section of the Voice.
I have had some experience in this area.
My father was a Doctor of Chemistry an expert in chemical analysis equipment design and operation and was a researcher with the Harvard School of Public Health and I was working as his assistant as a teenager in the labs. I never really understood how scared I should have been given the samples I was working with back then. After I read And The Band Played On, I really had a serious anxiety problem for a while.
There are times where the FDA will cut corners where there is a shortage of tools to use in a public health crisis.
To me for the FDA to provide such an approval in such a short time, they must have relied on the results at Stanford because there was no other testing done.
At the same time, what sampling was done to satisfy the statistical significance necessary to apply such a test perhaps nationwide.
If you look at this website https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
and you use 95% confidence and a .05 confidence interval
And a population of 330,000,000
A test sample size has to be 3,797,394
Did these people have this many tests to run? And where did the get the samples for testing/ How long would it take to test this many samples?
What is going on here is the FDA is going to use anything it can even if the proper standards are not followed. This was how AZT was approved for AIDS, but it was a VERY poor drug. In fact retrospective research indicated it was not a good drug, but it was the only one available, becasue it was already made by drug makers. THe report can be read here (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-rise-and-fall-of-azt-it-was-the-drug-that-had-to-work-it-brought-hope-to-people-with-hiv-and-2320491.html) titled “The rise and fall of AZT: It was the drug that had to work. It brought hope to people with HIV and Aids, and millions for the company that developed it. It had to work. There was nothing else. But for many who used AZT – it didn’t”
So please understand that the FDA is under GREAT pressure to get ANYTHING out there for President Trump. What I am nervous about is what happens if these people test negative but spread the disease? Does this test actually prevent spreading the disease?
Good questions?