Letters to the Editor

Letter: Testing leadership

There seems to be universal agreement that more and better testing is the way out of the COVID-19 pandemic. There also seems to be universal recognition that our current testing program is woefully ineffective, particularly when it takes 7-10 days (or more) in some cases to get results back. So, where do we go from here?

Both Time Magazine and the PBS Newshour have recently featured articles describing a test that is inexpensive, easy to use and can provide results in two minutes. The catch is that the test is not as accurate at predicting positivity as our current slow testing program. However, as the author, Dr. Ashish Jha (Harvard School of Public Health) contends, even when the quick test is only 50% accurate, it can still identify five times the number of cases than our current testing program and, importantly, it can do so while the person is still in the infectious stage, thus limiting the ability to transmit infection to others.

So, where is the national leadership on this issue? Nowhere to be seen, except for the banishment of Dr. Fauci and Trump's hiring of Dr. Scott Atlas, a conservative with no particular experience in infectious diseases to join his coronavirus task force. What will it take for Trump and his team to lead us out of this disaster?

Mike Jens

Anchorage

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