ABOVE: Kevin Hambourger, a medical lab technician at NorthShore University HealthSystem, which developed its own SARS-CoV-2 assays and is processing up to 600 patient samples a day, works under a fume hood.
NORTHSHORE UNIVERSITY HEALTHSYSTEM
After several weeks’ delay caused by faulty testing kits and bureaucratic hurdles, regulatory guidelines for COVID-19 tests are rapidly loosening in the US and testing capability is ramping up on a national and local scale.
By January, many American clinicians and academic researchers had an eye on the viral outbreak in Wuhan, China, and contemplated setting up in-house testing for the new coronavirus. “We had the foresight in January to imagine that the ability to provide testing for COVID-19 would be important, and we worked hard to make that happen,” Benjamin Pinsky, an infectious disease expert at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a press release March 16.
After the US Centers for Disease Control ...
