This week on the Minnesota Native News Health Report, separating science from politics. The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it was granting Covid-19 patients more access to plasma from people who’ve recovered from the virus.
Transcript
This week on the Minnesota Native News Health Report, separating science from politics. I’m Marie Rock. The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it was granting Covid-19 patients more access to plasma from people who’ve recovered from the virus. F-D-A Commissioner Stephen Hahn said scientists at the agency reviewed four months of data:
Those scientists concluded convalescent plasma was safe and showed efficacy thereby meeting the criteria for emergency use authorization.
But critics say the decision was politically motivated. It came the day before the Republican convention. They say convalescent plasma has not been studied enough to warrant emergency use. And that’s not the only recent controversy. Laurie Stern reports there’s confusion on who should get tested, too.
The Centers for Disease Control issued new guidelines this week saying tests were not necessary for people without symptoms but who have been in close contact with people who tested positive. But the Minnesota Department of Health – which often follows CDC recommendations – disagrees. Commissioner Jan Malcolm called for MORE people to be tested, not fewer.
There’s a whole lot more people we’d like to see getting tested than have been able to so far.
Minnesota guidelines say people should be tested if they’re showing symptoms, or if they’ve been in close contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19. That’s because nearly 40 percent of known infections are coming from unknown places. That means the virus is outpacing the state’s ability to track it. And the state needs more testing to regain that ability. Many providers do not have the capacity to offer tests to people who need them because there are not enough to go around.
Many of the health systems are needing to manage their testing capacity for their urgent clinical needs first, perhaps for hospitalized patients, people undergoing procedures, people in the ICU, essential personal as well as health care workers.
And when people do get tested, they often wait a long time for results.
The problem has been most exacerbated with the national laboratories in other states that are getting huge volumes from all around the country. Some of our health systems have contracts with those national reference labs. Test turnaround time at Mayo has been stressed because of the same thing, the volume of tests coming in to them from all over. I think our Minnesota laboratories have generally maintained a much better turnaround time than the national laboratories.
So health officials were pleased to announce a contract with a new testing facility in Oakdale to open early October.
It will allow us to offer more testing for more priority groups including people who have had close contact with people who test positive for Covid-19. It will allow us to do ore community testing in underserved populations, it will allow us to do rapid focused testing in an attempt to control outbreaks when they occur, and importantly we think it will help us control growth through more surveillance testing in more populations that we are concerned about being at risk.
The new lab will use saliva and not nasalpharygeal swabs; A technique officials say is new but just as effective in detecting the virus. They plan to set up testing sites in 10 places around the state as well as mobile testing events. They even hope to make test-at-home kits available. This is Kris Ehreseman, who leads the Infections Disease Division of the Minnesota Health Department.
Not only does it not require swabs which is a concern if you’re thinking about supply chain issues and logistics but also it’s a little more comfortable. Now I will acknowledge that several of us went through the test as a pilot and went through the process of testing and it went really really well but it does take a fair amount of saliva.
Officials expect an onslaught of respiratory illness as summer turns to fall. They say the new test will double their capacity to screen for COVID-19, and be especially useful to help K12 schools and colleges decide how to proceed.
It’s going to be important to be able to quickly distinguish and other typical seasonal illnesses from Covid-19.
Officials say the new lab will double the state’s testing capacity to about 50,000 per day and create up to 250 new jobs. For MNN I’m LS.