Covid Testing--Opinion: Rapid Tests Are the Answer to Living With Covid-19

https://www.nytimes.c

In Germany, you can buy a rapid Covid-19 test at the grocery store for one euro (a little more than a dollar). In Britain, any household can obtain a pack of seven rapid tests every day for free. In Singapore, you can get a free rapid test from a vending machine. Families in Israel receive at-home rapid tests for their children to use before school. Rapid testing is commonplace in many parts of the world because policymakers recognized early on that the tests could blunt the pandemic by stopping chains of transmission. By letting people know they are infectious, rapid tests are useful even in areas with high vaccination rates and can allow for a safer return to in-person activity.

But in the United States, if you’re lucky enough to find tests on a pharmacy shelf, they can cost from $7 to $50. The United States has not prioritized these tests, and only recently have Americans recognized their unique benefits. To end the coronavirus’s grip on American society, the United States must embrace rapid testing in a more substantial way by making it easier and cheaper for people to use them frequently.

At-home rapid tests — which are usually antigen tests — can tell people within minutes whether they are contagious with Covid-19. Many Americans are more familiar with laboratory P.C.R. tests, which tell users if there’s any amount of virus in their system and can often take 24 hours or longer to return results. (Dr. Mina advises a diagnostics company working on a rapid molecular test for Covid-19, which is different from the rapid antigen tests discussed here.) .

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The U.S. government should provide rapid tests to every American household, business and organization for free to complement the vaccination campaign and make abiding by the vaccine mandate more feasible. The investment could yield significant health and economic benefits. Past economic analyses predicted that a major government-funded rapid testing program that reached every American could add as much as $50 billion to the gross domestic product and save tens of thousands of lives or more.

There is bipartisan support for making rapid testing free and widely available. Changing the regulatory structure to bring more rapid tests into the U.S. market would make this possible, and there are successful national rapid test case studies from Britain and Germany that leaders can learn from.

Before rapid tests, people had to assume they could be contagious from Covid-19. That’s why people isolated themselves, and businesses and schools closed. It is why people missed holidays with their families. But by embracing rapid testing alongside vaccination, people can live with the virus. Workplaces can sustainably reopen. Children can stay in school. The United States should use rapid testing as a complement to the vaccine to put forward a multifaceted defense against Covid-19. Our leaders must work quickly to make this a reality.