Speaker 1: It's Friday August. I'm Oscar Emrrors from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. As
Speaker 1: the Delta baron continues to infect so many people, the
Speaker 1: demand for at home COVID test is going up. The
Speaker 1: only problem with that is that the test manufacturers can't
Speaker 1: keep up and they're becoming harder to find online and
Speaker 1: on pharmacy shelves. These antigen tests have faced questions of reliability,
Speaker 1: but work best on people who are shedding lots of
Speaker 1: IRUs particles and provide quick test results. Brianna Abbott, health
Speaker 1: reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Brianna, thanks for having me so
Speaker 1: something we had kind of forgotten about a little bit.
Speaker 1: The demand definitely was dropping was for COVID test at
Speaker 1: home COVID test, but as the Delta variant has been surging,
Speaker 1: the need for these tests has become more clear and
Speaker 1: right now, unfortunately, the makers of these at home tests
Speaker 1: are having a tough time keeping up with that demand.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at the laboratories Quadell, Core and a
Speaker 1: couple of other ones that are really starting to ramp
Speaker 1: up the production of these tests again, So Brandon, help
Speaker 1: us walk through some of this. What are we seeing?
Speaker 1: So you are spot on when you say that a
Speaker 1: lot of people forgot about COVID testing, and um, what
Speaker 1: we sort of saw in the late spring and early
Speaker 1: summer was testing demand really plummeted. For a few different reasons.
Speaker 1: We had federal guidance that said that vaccinated people didn't
Speaker 1: really need to get tested anymore and less they had symptoms,
Speaker 1: and you had a lot more vaccinated people and cases
Speaker 1: were dropping, and so you know, there just wasn't as
Speaker 1: much demands for testing, and as a results, some of
Speaker 1: the companies, including Abbott, scaled down some of their production.
Speaker 1: They say that they were sort of forced to scale
Speaker 1: back given the lack of demand. And now that we've
Speaker 1: seen things swing in the opposite direction, including cases surging,
Speaker 1: the notion that vaccinated people can and do sometimes spread
Speaker 1: the virus, and you know, just the overall worsening of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, kids going back to school, you're really seeing
Speaker 1: that demand take off again. And as a result, you
Speaker 1: are seeing some of the manufacturers sort of rushing to
Speaker 1: keep up. Some of them never really ramped down, but
Speaker 1: even those who did or did not everybody is sort
Speaker 1: of rushing to keep pain with the demand. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was just a huge shift. The focus was
Speaker 1: on vaccinations and as you mentioned, cases were dropping, so
Speaker 1: even some of these testing centers converted into vaccination centers.
Speaker 1: So you know, it was that huge ship that we
Speaker 1: were going through. Well, we're talking about specifically so people
Speaker 1: get the right frame of mind. We're talking about these
Speaker 1: at home antigin tests, so we're not talking about the
Speaker 1: PCR test. So if you can brand help us walk
Speaker 1: through some of you know, the major players in there.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned Abbott Laboratories, There's is called by x
Speaker 1: Now and a few other names out there. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to the at home antigen tests, a lot
Speaker 1: of these weren't authorized for over the counter pharmacy drug
Speaker 1: store youth until like March or April, so this was
Speaker 1: the first third where we really had them available like
Speaker 1: on pharmacy shell just for anybody to buy. And so
Speaker 1: we have sort of three main antigen tests, which is
Speaker 1: the binex Now from Abbott Laboratories, There's the Pudel puts
Speaker 1: view from Fudels Corp. And then there's the Aloom at
Speaker 1: home tests from the company Aloom and then there's also
Speaker 1: at home molecular tests like sort of like at home
Speaker 1: pc are that use slightly different technologies. There's one FLoC
Speaker 1: here of health, but those are sort of even the
Speaker 1: harder to find than the antigeny want. There's always been
Speaker 1: a conversation about the reliability of these antigen tests, these
Speaker 1: rapid tests. Sometimes there's false positives or false negatives even
Speaker 1: but you know, experts do say that they kind of
Speaker 1: work when you're using them in succession, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: three tests in a row, something like that. I think
Speaker 1: they call them them they call them contagiousness tests because
Speaker 1: it helps kind of track that a little bit better. Definitely,
Speaker 1: So with antigen tests, they're different than the molecular tests,
Speaker 1: which you know, hunt for the viruses genetic material and
Speaker 1: sort of amplify it, and so there's no amplification process
Speaker 1: with these antigen tests that look for bits of virus proteins,
Speaker 1: and so they are a bit less sensitive, and so
Speaker 1: you're gonna have them miss some more cases, might be
Speaker 1: a couple of false positives, but they are concerned is
Speaker 1: false negative. But all of the data that we have
Speaker 1: show that these ancient and tests they work well when
Speaker 1: viral loads are pretty high, and so if you're just
Speaker 1: shedding virus all over the place and you're incredibly contagious,
Speaker 1: the test will pick you up, but they miss sort
Speaker 1: of those lower rung if you don't if you're not
Speaker 1: carrying a lot of virus at that time, they might
Speaker 1: miss it. And so they work best when when viral
Speaker 1: loads are high. And so the whole idea is using
Speaker 1: them in rapid succession is that the amount of virus
Speaker 1: in your body like changes over the course of an infection,
Speaker 1: and so if you don't have a lot of virus
Speaker 1: in the beginning, the test might miss it, but two
Speaker 1: days later, your viral load could shoot up and then
Speaker 1: the test would pick it up. And so that's why
Speaker 1: you know, you might want to use multiple tests in
Speaker 1: a row. And both the Abbot and the Quiddel tests
Speaker 1: are authorized for screening, and so if you're screening without symptoms,
Speaker 1: you're really supposed to take two of them over the
Speaker 1: course of a couple of days. Yeah, I mean, just anecdotally,
Speaker 1: speaking for myself, I've I've haven't spoken about tests so
Speaker 1: much as in the recent past that you know, I've
Speaker 1: had a couple of coworkers unfortunately came down with COVID.
Speaker 1: They would both breakthrough infections also, but the same thing
Speaker 1: talking about the timing of tests are like, well, you
Speaker 1: know I might have been exposed, I gotta wait a
Speaker 1: couple of days just to make sure the test will
Speaker 1: pick it up. You know, there's so much that goes
Speaker 1: into it costs for these tests? How much did they cost?
Speaker 1: And you know, because you know, to buy at home
Speaker 1: tests can get pretty expensive, it seems like, so these
Speaker 1: at home tests, the cheapest runs run for a two
Speaker 1: pack of twenty or self it's roughly ten dollars for tests,
Speaker 1: but you have to buy two of them, so it's
Speaker 1: essentially twenty dollars. And um, that's okay if you want
Speaker 1: to use it as like a one time screening thing
Speaker 1: or you have symptoms, we really need an answer now.
Speaker 1: But for just something like regular screening, like most people
Speaker 1: aren't going to be able to afford to sort of
Speaker 1: constantly by worth of test. So there there has been
Speaker 1: public health experts that have sort of really been saying
Speaker 1: that if we really want widespread use of these as
Speaker 1: you know, frequent screening tools, the price is going to
Speaker 1: have to come down. Well, there's many ways and and
Speaker 1: options available to get tested. This is just one of them,
Speaker 1: the at home tests. I did check Amazon before we
Speaker 1: came onto this interview. It is currently unavailable and it
Speaker 1: says they have no idea when they're coming back, So
Speaker 1: just something to keep an eye out for when you're
Speaker 1: out there. Brianna Abbott, health reporter at The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
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