Poor COVID-19 testing hampering treatment research

There’s no doubt that poor rollout of tests by the Trump Administration has made the pandemic worse, but it turns out it’s also retarding our ability to develop treatments. Researchers are trying to use blood plasma from patients who have had the coronavirus and recovered to treat currently infected patients who are still at a manageable stage of the disease. 

The problem? We don’t have a big enough supply of people who had COVID-19 because we weren’t testing in large enough numbers to find them. Our country is probably full of them right now, but because we were testing, we can’t identify them fast enough to generate plasma to help people. Additionally there’s a special window four to six weeks after recovery where you have the most antibodies. If we don’t test enough, we will miss the window when those people are most ideal to donate blood plasma.

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