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Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

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Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#151
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thank you so much for explaining exponential growth to me. > Nobody has thousandfold more hospital beds and doctors ready, even less a million times more, which is the two month's growth. And in a few additional months, we will need more ICU beds than the number of atoms in the universe. Infection rates are already significant, there just aren't enough people to sustain two months' growth.

> there just aren't enough people to sustain two months' growth

It can be simply calculated: it is expected that without measures the growth to 70% of population would be continuous (very approximately, the end phase wouldn't, we're estimating the limit). So the target is 6e9 people. If we assume that 4/5ths are the people who remain undetected by our current sampling, we want to know the growth between the current known infected and the target which is then 1.26e9 people. Currently known are 0.5 million infected. So the fastest end of growth phase would be just: 2520 times or around 2^11=2048 == just 11 times 3 day doubling time, or 33 days.

The growth will surely not be always exactly 3 days however, so it will be slower, but still not less dramatic, because the resources are many, many times smaller, in the poorer countries many tens of times smaller.

In short it can be very, very bad, and that will be much longer than just a month, just not the exact growth as now.

See the papers from Imperial College London for the exact shapes of the curves and the examples of their speed and growth.

The last one is from today.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#152
post #106

Here is a dumb idea: Mix and test multiple people at the same time.

That's already being done in some places that have limited numbers of tests. The governor of Nebraska announced that they are pooling tests to save on test kits. Samples from 5 people are combined in 1 test. If the sample tests negative, those people are in the clear. If the sample tests positive, all 5 are then tested again separately.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#153
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…

In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thus reducing virus spread.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#154
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…

In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thu…

...able to detect antibodies only not virus...This test is only useful in the later part of infection

Actually, getting a sense of the penetration of infection into the general population, among asymptomatic people and mild cases would be very valuable information! Antibody tests could be used to sample test the public at large.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#155
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I heard that this is about testing in the periphery? MDs could put it in their offices and test their employees daily, for example. That’s one possible use case.

I'd assume most general practitioners aren't taking patients in person anymore except in exceptional circumstances. It could definitely be useful for testing hospital personnel before they go on shift, tho.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#156
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thank you so much for explaining exponential growth to me. > Nobody has thousandfold more hospital beds and doctors ready, even less a million times more, which is the two month's growth. And in a few additional months, we will need more ICU beds than the number of atoms in the universe. Infection rates are already significant, there just aren't enough people to sustain two months' growth.

> Infection rates are already significant, there just aren't enough people to sustain two months' growth.

This is wrong, of course there are enough people for this to grow for months even with no containment efforts.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#157
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't we optimize for a higher number of false positives? In the end, sending someone in quarantine for 2 weeks without them being infected is probably less dangerous than a false negative. So making tests overly sensitive would seem more applicable to me here.

No, we should optimize for a balance between the two. For example a 150,000 batch of rapid tests China recently sent to Czechia had 80% error rates. You don't want to be mass quarantining people because of such terrible testing supplies.

There's nothing inherently bad with mass quarantines.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#158
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…

Not to mention the expensive cost of consumables. This is more of a marketing play than a practical solution to the global pandemic.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#159
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…

In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thu…

Even if you have unlimited virus tests, antibody tests are extremely useful. The one combined with the other demonstrates recovery as opposed to pre-infection. Supposedly antibody tests can also be made field-deployable much easier than virus tests.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#160
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…

In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thu…

I imagine antibody tests are very very useful for spotting people have already contracted the disease, recovered and may therefore have a degree of immunity.
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