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Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

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Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#101
post #3

It all sounds impressive to me: >In various laboratory tests with SARS-CoV-2, the Bosch test delivered results with an accuracy of over 95 percent. I've read a lot of report on the current tests for SARS-CoV-2 having accuracy issues, does anyone know how 95% accuracy compares to the current methods?

Practicing hospital physician here. We never use the term "accuracy" to describe diagnostic tests, and whenever I see that term used, I'm very suspicious of the claim being made. In other words, this Bosch announcement can probably be ignored. We use the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity" to describe diagnostic test performance, and never to my knowledge talk about a test's "accuracy." Usually accuracy refers to t…

Sounds like "Sensitivity" and "Specificity" are analogous to "Accuracy" and "Precision" typically used in data sciences.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#102
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plus in the current context, false negatives are much more dangerous than false positives

Not necessarily. Hospitals in an epidemic are major spreaders of the infection. If false positive results lead to patients being put together with real carriers, they will soon be infected. From a recent report[1] from Italy: > For example, we are learning that hospitals might be the main Covid-19 carriers, as they are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients. Patients…

> some of the major causes of the large death toll...

Wrong. The major cause is that the number of people getting sick at once was much higher than the infrastructure can handle. That's what other governments saw and now try to avoid with the lockdowns.

This was made 10 days ago by the Italian biotech Association it's the number of new cases and deaths per week (red), compared with the number of cases per week at the peak of the "normal" flu (blue):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...

It can happen everywhere if the growth continues, simply because nothing can cope with fast exponential growth. At the moment, wherever it is uncontrolled, it's around 3 days to double. Sounds like small numbers, just 2 and 3? That gives however a thousandfold growth in 30 days: everybody working with computers should be very familiar with the equation 2^10 = 1024 (it's 2^(30/3) == 2^10 == 1024, 30 being the number of days for the projection, 3 the doubling time and 2 the doubling itself).

Nobody has thousandfold more hospital beds and doctors ready, even less a million times more, which is the two month's growth.

Discussing other factors without first admitting the major one is obviously biased.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#103
post #98

This is not rapid, only 10 tests/day, whilst the current overly slow sequencers can do 200/day. The accuracy of 5% is also worse than other faster sequencers of 3%. And compare that to modern ThermalFischer parallel PCR sequencers, which operate in realtime, 25 tests in parallel, for 2.500€. That's a factor of 1000. With 10 modern sequencers per city you could test 10.000 per day, eg with drive-in. https://www.thermo…

This is low throughput but high speed; there's a use-case for that.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#104
post #98

This is not rapid, only 10 tests/day, whilst the current overly slow sequencers can do 200/day. The accuracy of 5% is also worse than other faster sequencers of 3%. And compare that to modern ThermalFischer parallel PCR sequencers, which operate in realtime, 25 tests in parallel, for 2.500€. That's a factor of 1000. With 10 modern sequencers per city you could test 10.000 per day, eg with drive-in. https://www.thermo…

Agreed. Also the Cepheid one is faster (45 minute for point-of-care results) and has FDA approval ... not sure other advantages/disadvantages of each system though (instrument and reagent cost, # deployed units, etc).

https://www.cepheid.com/coronavirus

That said, it’s great to see all the companies that are putting real effort into this. This is their time to serve.

My own employer has assembled a task force for repurposing some kits we have for covid research. Everyone working on it is happy to have someway they can try and help out.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#105
post #85
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: ”The widely available Roche’s cobas 6800/8800 Systems, which are used to perform the cobas SARS-CoV-2 Test, provide test results in three and half hours and offer improved operating efficiency, flexibility, and fastest time-to-results with the highest throughput providing up to 96 results in about three hours and a total of 384 results for the cobas 6800 System and 960 results for the cobas 8800 Syste…

So you need 288 BOSH devices to have the daily throughput of a ROCHE 8800 System

To be fair, there’s a massive price difference between the bosh and roche machine.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#107
post #3

It all sounds impressive to me: >In various laboratory tests with SARS-CoV-2, the Bosch test delivered results with an accuracy of over 95 percent. I've read a lot of report on the current tests for SARS-CoV-2 having accuracy issues, does anyone know how 95% accuracy compares to the current methods?

Practicing hospital physician here. We never use the term "accuracy" to describe diagnostic tests, and whenever I see that term used, I'm very suspicious of the claim being made. In other words, this Bosch announcement can probably be ignored. We use the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity" to describe diagnostic test performance, and never to my knowledge talk about a test's "accuracy." Usually accuracy refers to t…

Accuracy = (Sensitivity + Specificity) / 2.

The measure does sometimes get used when discussing diagnostic tests - for an example from psychology/psychiatry see https://insar.confex.com/insar/2019/webprogram/Paper29391.ht...

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#108
post #61

How is this better than Open qPCR which is 3-times less expensive and can give a test result in 1 hour instead of 2.5 hours?

It’s helpful in this time to think of the total cost. If you have equipment already deployed where needed and people already trained that helps!

We really need a whole suite of tests and so the more the merrier. Doctors and healthcare systems will need to figure out what works best for their needs.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#109
post #57
post #52

More details about the test: https://www.bosch-vivalytic.com/en/product/vivalytic-tests/v...

So the whole thing is an existing product that was extended to also test for Coronavirus?

Yes. The best way to build something. Use what you have validated already.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#110
post #3

It all sounds impressive to me: >In various laboratory tests with SARS-CoV-2, the Bosch test delivered results with an accuracy of over 95 percent. I've read a lot of report on the current tests for SARS-CoV-2 having accuracy issues, does anyone know how 95% accuracy compares to the current methods?

Practicing hospital physician here. We never use the term "accuracy" to describe diagnostic tests, and whenever I see that term used, I'm very suspicious of the claim being made. In other words, this Bosch announcement can probably be ignored. We use the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity" to describe diagnostic test performance, and never to my knowledge talk about a test's "accuracy." Usually accuracy refers to t…

This page was obviously written by the marketing department. So, let's see what their actual tech specs will look like when they come out.
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