It seemed such a good idea at the time. Take a quick rapid diagnostic test for the coronavirus and have results back in fifteen minutes. The right color is all we need to know, and life is back to normal, or is it?The system can lose our precious data and science is the poorer. That, in a nutshell is the hidden public health risk of rapid COVID-19 tests.
The Public Health Risk of Rapid COVID-19 Tests: Inaccurate Data
We support the federal program to get millions of tests to educators, students, nursing home patients, first responders, and other vulnerable hot spots. However, the federal program is rushed for obvious reasons, and less than perfect data is forthcoming.
Our scientists need structured data about individual demographics to obtain an accurate bigger picture. Therefore, it’s unhelpful if test records don’t contain information on age, zip code, gender, ethnicity, and so on. Stat News says the situation has improved, but the public health risk attached to rapid COVID-19 tests still exists.
‘Thousands of Testing Sites Ill-Equipped to Comply with Regulations’
Stat News confirms traditional laboratories provide data including patient’s age, race, ethnicity, gender, and ZIP code. However, testing sites nationwide are ‘beginning to operate outside of laboratory facilities. And are not equipped to comply with state and federal reporting regulations.’
This could include ‘the vast majority of nursing homes as well as many urgent care and physician offices’. And also ‘community testing pop ups’ intending to take testing to the people.
As a consequence, the CDC has only race and ethnicity data for half Covid-19 cases. Stat News expects data gaps to widen if this trend continues. It says this means ‘we could lose millions of data points about Covid-19’. And we, and science, and the vaccine program will surely be the poorer.
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