Will COVID-19 be the coming of age for point-of-care testing?
Citation
Christopher P Price, Andrew St John. Will COVID-19 be the coming of age for point-of-care testing? BMJ Innov 2020;0:1–3.
Abstract
BACKGROUND
As countries deal with the COVID-19
pandemic in varying ways, one area
of agreement is the need to test for the
COVID-19 virus in as many people as
possible. Beeching et al have rightly
pointed out that ‘tests cannot be interpreted if they are not available’.1
However, as reported in the UK media,
access to COVID-19 (viral) testing has
been limited for some sections of the
population including healthcare professionals and carers. There have also been
long delays in getting the results back to
the person being tested. This has now
been addressed by increasing the number
of specimen collection stations and the
use of home collection kits, although the
return of results can take several days.