As the fall flu season approaches, experts are hard at work on rapid at-home coronavirus tests hoping to have them made widely available in the United States, seeking a "technical breakthrough."
There's an ongoing scramble for "next-stage technologies" that could ultimately lead to widespread COVID-19 tests quickly providing results at home, The Wall Street Journal reports, and many developers are in on the effort.
Among them are teams looking to use gene-editing technology, while OraSure Technologies says it's hoping to submit an at-home test to the FDA this September. There's also a Shark Tank-esque competition underway launched by the National Institutes of Health seeking to accelerate development of COVID-19 testing technologies, laying out an ambitious goal of making "millions of accurate and easy-to-use tests per week available to all Americans by the end of summer 2020," and according to the Journal, more than 280 groups have applied.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
But it's still an "open question" whether millions of rapid tests can be produced per week by the fall, the Journal notes. Mammoth Biosciences advisory board member Charles Y. Chiu told the Journal that "I don't want to underestimate the magnitude of the challenge," while Quest Diagnostics' Gary Samuels said that in terms of testing, it's "hard to imagine getting to the numbers that people are talking about without some sort of technical breakthrough, and that's what everyone's searching for."
-
Confessions of a Brain Surgeon: an 'exceptional' documentaryThe Week Recommends Retired neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reflects on his pioneering work with exquisitely 'raw honesty'
-
A new subtype of diabetes was found and it may require different treatmentUnder the radar It is prevalent in Black Africans and Americans
-
Crossword: August 20, 2025The Week's daily crossword
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check lawSpeed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestoneSpeed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two yearsSpeed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on XSpeed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellitesSpeed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodesSpeed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 yearsSpeed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
