opinion: NIH 'Shark Tank' on track to produce quick, inexpensive COVID-19 tests by fall: Senators

NIH 'Shark Tank' on track to produce quick, inexpensive COVID-19 tests by fall: Senators While we wait for vaccines and treatments, testing is critical to containing COVID-19 and helping people safely return to school, work and eating out. Lamar Alexander and Roy Blunt USA TODAY

Imagine being able to take a test to find out whether you have COVID-19 and get the result in minutes, not days. Imagine also that the test costs $1 or $5 so that you could take tests as often as you want. Think how much easier that would make it for doctors to treat patients and for public health departments to track down and isolate those exposed to the virus. You could be sure you and your child are healthy before she goes to school or you head out to work or to dinner or to visit parents or grandparents you haven’t seen in months.

Easier to use inexpensive tests with quick results are the surest path back toward normal until we have a vaccine — and thanks to a National Institutes of Health project called the “Shark Tank,” scientists are transforming COVID-19 diagnostic testing. 

The “Shark Tank,” which we proposed and Congress created in April, is a $2.5 billion initiative in which the NIH, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and private industry are working together overtime to develop new ways to produce tens of millions of COVID-19 diagnostic tests that are capable of providing quick, inexpensive results. 

Today, the United States can conduct approximately 800,000 COVID-19 tests a day, but the current tests are complex. And there is so much demand that people wait in lines for hours to get tests, and may wait days, or even weeks, for results. 

This program, officially called the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, is pulling out all stops to fast track new technologies designed to produce tens of millions of diagnostic tests that can deliver results in minutes or hours, instead of waiting several days for a laboratory to return a result. RADx is doing in months what used to take three to seven years....