COVID19 Testing Guidelines
- Centers for Disease Control (CDC) currently has a packaged kit for testing of patients who meet current criteria
- Current criteria for testing is evolving and at time of writing is based on February 27, 2020 guidelines.[1]
- Presence of clinical lower respiratory symptoms (cough, shortness of breath or fever) and known contact with confirmed case
- Fever and lower respiratory symptoms requiring hospitalization and travel from affected areas (China, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea)
- Fever with sever, acute lower respiratory illness requiring hospitalization and without alternative explanatory diagnosis and no source of exposure identified
- “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Panel.” It is intended for use with the Applied Biosystems 7500 Fast DX Real-Time PCR Instrument with SDS 1.4 software. This test is intended for use with upper and lower respiratory specimens collected from persons who meet CDC criteria for COVID-19 testing. [2]
- As of February 3rd 2020 an emergency use authorization (EUA) was granted for the use of unapproved, but potentially life-saving medical or diagnostic products during a public health emergency14
- 40 state public health labs can begin testing for COVID-19 using parts of the original CDC test[3]
- There has been difficulty in developing an accurate test as this is a new pathogen
- A goal of being able to perform 10,000 tests per day
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/testing.html
[3] http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/feds-allow-state-public-health-labs-test-covid-19
