Opinions & observations: Rapid COVID-19 tests can be useful. But there are far too few to put a dent in the pandemic.
Since September, the Food and Drug Administration has approved seven COVID-19 tests that yield results in 30 minutes or less, offering hope for vast improvements in test accessibility and efficiency throughout the U.S. Most of these are antigen tests that look for viral proteins and can be processed on portable machines or cards.
The idea behind these rapid tests is to detect symptomatic, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic infectious people before they can spread the coronavirus. But despite massive distribution of these tests by federal officials – including to date over 40 million of 150 million rapid tests ordered from the medical company Abbott – COVID-19 transmission has been surging in every state since early November.
This calls into question whether the current influx of rapid tests can actually slow the spread of COVID-19.
In some targeted applications – and if people take other precautions including mask wearing and social distancing – rapid tests can be a valuable tool. But the current states of the availability and accuracy of these tests greatly limit how effective they are at slowing the spread of the virus in communities.