• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The CDC And NIH Begin Rapid At Home COVID19 Testing Initiative In North Carolina And Tennessee

April 8, 2021 by Jennifer Preston Leave a Comment

The officials of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have started a new rapid at-home testing program to identify whether the frequent and extensive rapid COVID19 tests have reduced the spread of the virus. The officials have announced that they are going to make rapid at-home antigen tests accessible at no cost for residents of two communities Pitt County, North Carolina, and Hamilton County in Tennessee. The officials have said that under this plan, around 160000 people will be able to test themselves for COVID19 three times a week for a month. An epidemiologist at Harvard University, Michael Mina has said that such efforts are needed to keep a track of viral spread.

He has said that widespread and accessible rapid COVID19 tests are needed to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As per the experts, people can easily take 30 seconds out of their schedule to perform the test three times a week. As per the report, antigen tests are low-cost and can deliver results faster than the RT-PCR tests. RT-PCR tests are the gold standard tests for diagnosing the COVID19 disease that is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the antigen test can be prone to false-negative reports, as these tests are less sensitive.

Health experts have said that if these tests are used regularly, it might help reduce the spread of the virus. They have confirmed that these tests can help track people who are unaware that they are infected with the virus. These tests will help guide these people to isolate themselves before they start infecting others. Public health experts have said that real-world data is quite limited and with surging cases of COVID19 in the country, testing has become very crucial. Dr. Bruce Tromberg is the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, who heads a rapid acceleration diagnostic program that will provide the testing kits for the initiative.

Dr. Tromberg has said that he and his team believe that rapid antigen tests at home at a larger scale might be able to prevent the chain of the spread of the virus. It will as well identify many more other new cases in the communities. The officials have said that residents of these communities who want to take part in the testing initiative will be able to get their testing kits delivered at their homes or can collect from the nearest distribution sites. There will be an online support tool that will guide people through the testing procedure and help them read the results.

Health officials have informed that residents, who are willing, can participate in a survey that will identify whether the new initiative has brought some changes in their behavior, knowledge about COVID19, and views on getting the vaccine. Experts from the University of North Carolina and Duke University will be comparing the positivity rate, case, and the rate of hospitalization of these two communities to the outcomes of this initiative in other two similar communities.

Dr. David Paltiel, who is a professor of health policy and management at Yale School of Public Health, has said that it is a launch of a real-world study of the efficiency of rapid at-home testing. He has warned that people should be careful while reading the results, mostly when people who are participating in the testing drive are not representatives of the community at large. Dr. Paltiel has said that it will be great to see how this initiative turns out to be, though the outcomes might not be widely applicable to screening programs where participation is obligatory.

Jennifer Preston
Jennifer Preston

Related posts:

  1. Experts Caution Only Vaccines Might Not Be Able To Curb The COVID19 Pandemic
  2. WHO Says The COVID19 Pandemic Has Derailed The Efforts To End Tuberculosis By A Decade
  3. Health Experts Say Inoculating Children Will Help In Achieving Herd Immunity Against The COVID19
  4. Health Experts Claim People With Dementia Are At A Higher Risk Of Contracting The Coronavirus

Filed Under: Health

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • How Much Of The Sun’s Radiation Is At Wavelengths We Can See?
  • Alcohol And Dementia Risk: There Is No Safe Level Of Drinking
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Have Been Caught In Perseverance Rover Photo
  • Friendly Falkland Islands “Wolf” Was Actually The Last Stronghold Of A Fox Domesticated In South America
  • Wolf-Dog Hybrid Found In Greece For First Time, Marking A New Twist In Wolves’ Return To Europe
  • Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist George Smoot, Who Made The First “Baby Pictures” Of The Universe, Dies Aged 80
  • The Most Powerful Odd Radio Circle’s Intersecting Rings Are Giving Us The Finger
  • Over $1 Million Of Shipwrecked Gold and Silver Coins Recovered From Florida’s Coast
  • Astronaut Don Pettit Shares Image Of The “Belt Of Venus” From The International Space Station
  • Deathwatch Beetles: Bad Omens In The Night? Nope, They’re Just Horny
  • Why Do So Many Nobel Laureates Develop “Nobel Disease”?
  • Does The Moon Affect The Menstrual Cycle? Yes, New Study Claims
  • The Second Closest Asteroid Flyby Of Earth Ever Recorded Just Whizzed Over Antarctica
  • New Theory Reveals Shackleton’s Legendary Ship “Endurance” Was Doomed To Sink In 1915
  • Revolutionary Discovery In Immune System Regulation Leads To Nobel Prize In Medicine Win
  • These May Be The First Animals To Evolve On Planet Earth, Skin Cells Have Been Used To Create Fertilizable Eggs, And Much More This Week
  • The Largest Eagle To Ever Live Had A 3-Meter Wingspan And Ate Moa For Lunch
  • “Tangy And Herbaceous” Yogurt Made With Forest Ants – And They’re Not For Extra Protein
  • This Bizarre Jurassic Reptile Is A Weird Mix Of Snake And Lizard
  • Mummified Cheetahs, Skin Cells Turn Into Eggs, And Almost Life On Enceladus
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version