Gates foundation-backed program develops home testing kits for COVID-19

The outbreak of deadly coronavirus has profoundly impacted every single country across the globe, prompting the countries’ governments to think of effective ways to tackle it from further spread. At this crucial time, the matter of utmost priority and concern for every nation is saving human lives.

The recent initiative, towards that direction, has been taken by the Gates Foundation, in the form of a coronavirus centric program. The project funded by the Gates Foundation will begin developing home kits for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

This project is a result of a two-year-old research project from the University of Washington that aimed to track the spread of diseases like influenza.

According to the Seattle Times report, the study, based on a nose-swab is expected to return results in up to two days and will be shared with health officials who can then inform people who test positive. Then, infected people will be encouraged to answer an online questionnaire. The questionnaire will then provide necessary information about the infected people’s movements to health officials so that they can identify and notify other people who are likely to be infected.

About the program, an official from the Foundation who leads the coronavirus response effort, Scott Dowell, said: “Although there’s a lot to be worked out, this has enormous potential to turn the tide of the epidemic. One of the most important things from our perspective, having watched and worked on this in other parts of the world, is the identification of people who are positive for the virus, so they can be safely isolated and cared for, and the identification of their contacts, who can then be quarantined.”