Diagnostics


The positive test


The Covid-19 pandemic provided the impetus for unprecedented speed in the development of testing methods, as the industry collaborated, and regulators worldwide supported their efforts with emergency approval pathways. But now we’ve seen what’s possible under the right circumstances, is there any going back to the way things were before? Abi Millar speaks to Karen Taylor, director of the UK Centre for Health Solutions at Deloitte, and Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic, to find out what the future of diagnostic testing for infectious diseases could look like.


B 10


efore the pandemic, infectious disease testing was not considered an everyday part of life. If ever such tests were needed, they took place in a medical setting and under very specific circumstances. They were treated as an individual issue, rather than as a population-wide screening tool. The changes forced by Covid-19 were unprecedented to say the least. As part of their public health response, many countries posted out


free rapid antigen tests to anyone who wanted them. The UK Government provided more than two billion tests over a two-year period, with delivery capacity peaking at nearly a million kits per day.


Mass testing on this scale, given the price tag, was probably never going to become a feature of life over the longer term. Equally, there’s no going back to how things were in 2019. Covid-19 has shown us


Practical Patient Care / www.practical-patient-care.com


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