Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

To Boost Rapid Testing

New programs aim to boost the availability of rapid at-home testing for SARS-CoV-2 in the US, according to the Washington Post.

It adds that one such program at the US National Institutes of Health is using $70 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan to help test makers make their way through the regulatory process at the Food and Drug Administration and better understand what data the FDA needs. According to the Post, the hope for the program is to speed up the authorization process. It notes that the Biden Administration announced earlier this month that it would buy $1 billion worth of rapid tests.

While rapid tests are generally less accurate than PCR tests, they can return results in minutes and be used help make decisions about school or participating in other activities, the Post says, adding that other countries like the UK have implemented rapid testing as part of their pandemic response.

"This is all extremely good news, and I love that they are expanding the validation efforts so that there won't just be more tests, but high-quality tests," Gigi Gronvall from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security tells the Post.

The Scan

Genetic Testing Approach Explores Origins of Blastocyst Aneuploidy

Investigators in AJHG distinguish between aneuploidy events related to meiotic missegregation in haploid cells and those involving post-zygotic mitotic errors and mosaicism.

Study Looks at Parent Uncertainties After Children's Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Diagnoses

A qualitative study in EJHG looks at personal, practical, scientific, and existential uncertainties in parents as their children go through SCID diagnoses, treatment, and post-treatment stages.

Antimicrobial Resistance Study Highlights Key Protein Domains

By screening diverse versions of an outer membrane porin protein in Vibrio cholerae, researchers in PLOS Genetics flagged protein domain regions influencing antimicrobial resistance.

Latent HIV Found in White Blood Cells of Individuals on Long-Term Treatments

Researchers in Nature Microbiology find HIV genetic material in monocyte white blood cells and in macrophages that differentiated from them in individuals on HIV-suppressive treatment.