It's Tuesday, March seventeen. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. Testing for coronavirus will soon start to ramp up as the government gets up to speed and also as private labs develop their own tests, such as the Mayo Clinic, who has made their own test that can detect the virus that causes COVID nineteen. Experts say that once this starts, we will begin to see confirmed cases rise.
Dr Bill Maurice, president of Mayo Clinic Laboratories, joins us for white testing is so important. Thanks for joining us, Dr Maurice, that's my pleasure, Oscar. We're gonna be talking about coronavirus testing, COVID nineteen and why it's so important. First off, I want to start off the Mayo Clinic has developed a test that can detect stars cove to the virus that causes COVID nineteen. So tell us about the test that you guys developed first, and then we'll
have a broaderct discussion about testing in general. So, Mayo Clinic Laboratories we actually form testing, not only for Mayo Clinic patients, but for patients across the Unites Eights and across the globe. So we're continually looking out for new tests that are gonna need to support patient care, and particularly we look out for new pathogens that might need
to be diagnosed. So we're paying very close attention to how the COVID nineteen disease was playing out in China, and about four weeks ago our own internal Mayo clinic doctors started to enquire about the availability of COVID nineteen testing, and as we saw the disease really overwhelmed the healthcare system in China, we determined that really we would want to develop our own diagnostic essay for the disease, even though at that time testing was mandated to go through
the CDC. So we've been working on the test for about a month. We do have a partner lab in China, Ushi Diagnostics, and so we really got firsthand counting of how difficult it was to keep up with the demand for testing, so we pretty much put a team on this around the clock to develop our own molecular test to detect the virus, and so that was something that gave us a bit of a head start, so we were able to late last week actually introduced a clinical
test to detect the virus in clinical specimens. And how does the testing work and what does the turnaround time for results? So the testing works by a method called PCR, So basically it's a molecular amplification of the stars copy two virus out of the specimen. Once we get the specimen in the lab, it takes us anywhere from four to five hours to actually generate a result. So if we can get the specimen to us quickly, we can usually turn around a test within a day or so.
I've read that the Mayo clinic there works in close contact with the Minnesota Department of Health. I guess results are sent there to be verified after not verified per se. Just the essay that we have is actually approved for use by the FDA. So a result as a result, a positive, as a positive, negative and negative. The Minnesota Department of Health really needs to know about when we have a positive case because really they're trying to track
how the disease is spreading in the state. And that's why the CDC and all the departments of health are actually working collaborations, so we can't understand how it spreads across the country, which is of course really important as
we try and contain the spread of COVID nineteen. In fact, that rationale explains why typically when I knew infection or pathogen becomes president in the United States, the initial disease testing is almost always handled by the CDC, just because it gives them a good handle about how the disease is spreading and also to make sure that the diagnosis is accurate. However, in this case, again, this COVID nineteen has really overwhelmed. It's usually a very robust system for
responding to these things. So we still form our testing but reported to the Minnesota Department of Health, and that's also important. That's the broader importance of testing and making sure we can find who has it and then obviously follow it down the pathway who they've been in contact with some numbers that we've been seeing. The US has completed about twenty coronavirus tests as of last Friday, so the testing response has been very slow up until now.
It'll start ramping up with tests like yours and others as well. But they explain to us why this is so important, and we're gonna see numbers explode is from what everybody's saying. You know, once we start getting true numbers, true tests, we're going to see the numbers rise of confirmed cases. But help explain to us why this is of the utmost importance. There's really two reasons why getting
the testing done is really important. Number one, it's to really understand and protect those who are particular risk for
this particular COVID nineteen infection. If you look at the experience in China and in northern Italy where we're now getting results published in the medical literature, it really is becoming a parent that for patients that are young and healthy, it poses a pretty minimal health risk, similar to influenza or other respiratory viruses, but for the elderly or those with an underlying medical condition, they can get into really
serious double requiring intensive hospitalization. And so the first aspect of the testing is really to identify who has it to make sure that we can try and protect those who might be particularly at risk for having a bad outcome from COVID nineteen infection. And the other is to understand how the disease is spreading across the United States so we can really try and institute containment measures which are becoming shown to be really important and protecting those
who are particularly likely to develop a bad disease. So that, of course is balanced against the fact that this is an extremely unusual situation where you have essentially, on the turn of a dime, two million Americans wanting a test that didn't exist two to three months ago, and so the national supplies are not endless, and we really need
to be thoughtful about who gets the testing. That's why it's really important that people who want the testing first get screened by their primary care provider to make sure that they actually need the testing before it gets performed, and also to make sure they get tested for other viral and says it's still most cases of viral respiratory tract infection that you'll see in the community will be influence A or other more common viruses, right, So that's
why so that's really important to do the testing in the right people to protect them and to protect the public. And that's a tough one because as we hear a lot about it in the news, more and more people are getting it. I think the latest news is the actor Idris Elba has it. I've had some friends that said I don't feel any symptoms, maybe I'm asymptomatic. I want to get tested anyways, So people are colamoring for this,
but you know, you got to take the advice. Obviously, all the people that are experiencing symptoms, all that need to go first. That's where the necessity is. Look, there's a lot of unknown with this stars Kobe two or COVID nineteen affection, which of course engenders a lot of fear. I get it completely, and yet we have to be
thoughtful to make sure that we can have the test available. Say, if someone comes to the hospital and we have to make a rapid decision as to whether they need isolateation or as it turns out, if they do have this disease and their shorter breath, they might need to get
into an intensive care unit early. As much as people want to know if they have the infection, which is totally understandable, we have to be sure as healthcare providers that we have the ability to test the patients where we're going to be making really critical decisions that will affect people's lives. Dr Bill Maurice, President of Mayo Clinic Laboratories, thank you very much for joining us. Oh my pleasure. This has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
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