U.S. Needs Better Technology to Test for COVID-19: Top Health Official

Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, told a Senate hearing yesterday that the nation needs better diagnostic testing technology to cope with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, reports Reuters. Collins said existing testing technology still depends on sending samples to labs for results. Looking ahead, new technologies must be developed to deliver tests that rapidly deliver results on site and be widely distributed. Collins commented, "We believe it is not just a matter of taking what we have and making it higher throughput, we need new technologies that have these more appropriate features." His remarks echoed those by Deborah Birx, coordinator of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, who said in April that "we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing" to fully reopen the economy.