Engineering for Pandemics: Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Proceedings of a Forum (2021) / Chapter Skim
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3 Diagnostics
3 Diagnostics
Pages 10-16
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From page 10... ...
However, viral RNA can usually be detected for weeks after the infection has cleared, likely due to residual RNA fragments that remain in the host after the virus has been eliminated. Because covid-19 is primarily a respiratory disease, molecules from the virus can be detected in the nasal cavity using nasopharyngeal swabs that penetrate deep into the nasal cavity, anterior nasal swabs that take a shallower sample of the nasal cavity, and saliva.
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From page 11... ...
The tests typically occur too late to prevent infected individuals from infecting others, but they are useful in determining whether someone has been infected, how strong the host response to the virus has been, and community prevalence. They are being used in vaccine trials, for example, to determine whether trial subjects are developing robust immune responses and producing protective antibodies, and in communities to determine whether a population has reached a state of herd immunity.
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From page 12... ...
Even the major national diagnostic chains, such as LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, encountered capacity problems because of the tremendous demand for testing. Modern high-throughput sequencers can be repurposed for massively parallel testing, where thousands of samples can be molecularly tagged, combined, and simultaneously tested to determine which samples contain virus and which do not.
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From page 13... ...
While other countries have been able to rely on centralized testing, the United States cannot rely on the logistics of sending tests to a few central laboratories. "In the future, we need to have public health labs in each state or region capable of filling the testing needs until direct-to-consumer and point-of-care tests become available." Third, independent validation must be done by accredited laboratories and not left to the companies that are making these products.
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From page 14... ...
incorporates three equally weighted dimensions: health, education, and living standards. The health dimension considers nutrition and child mortality; the education dimension, years of schooling and school attendance; and the living standards dimension, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets.
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From page 15... ...
For example, between 2005–06 and 2015–16, over 270 million people left poverty in India, and the country's poorest groups -- children, Muslims, scheduled castes and tribes -- and poorest states reduced poverty the fastest. For the 75 countries and 5 billion people for which OPHI has traced trends over time, MPI had been reduced by a statistically significant amount.
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From page 16... ...
An appalling number of people still lack food, water, electricity, and schools and live on a dirt floor with a bamboo roof that leaks, Alkire concluded. "A question is whether the pandemic and the economic recession can jumpstart not only research on the vaccine, as vital as that is, but also a space where engineers could create a true inflection point in poverty by untangling interlinked deprivation bundles that deeply afflict billions of our companions on the planet."
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