Day 204: Stay Safe Minnesota
Minnesota is expanding COVID-19 testing capacity by opening 10 saliva testing facilities that can analyze additional 30,000 saliva samples per day bringing the state’s total testing capacity to 60,000 tests per day.
The Star Tribune reporter Jeremy Olson writes that Minnesota health officials are expanding COVID-19 testing capacity by opening of a processing facility that can analyze up to 30,000 saliva samples per day speeding up detection of hot spots. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently announced that 10 new COVID-19 saliva testing sites will open in the coming weeks in communities around Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) website the saliva test is “more comfortable than a nasal swab, and available at no cost to anyone who believes they need a COVID-19 test”.
Saliva testing relies on the same process as nasopharyngeal testing (the nose swabs), in that they are both PCR tests that detect whether or not someone is currently infected with COVID-19. They differ in the method of sample collection. In the case of saliva tests, the user spits into a funnel attached to a tube. The saliva test that will be used at the Minnesota sites is similar in accuracy — within a couple percentage points — to nasopharyngeal swabs.
MDH officials (source: Politico)
According to the MDH, the saliva testing will supplement Minnesota’s current COVID-19 testing efforts by adding capacity as well as helping tests get processed more quickly.
- Minnesota to launch COVID-19 saliva lab to find hot spots
- Saliva testing sites opening around the state
- COVID-19 Community Saliva Testing
Star Tribune’s Olson writes that ‘Minnesota bet big on the new technology through a $14.6 million partnership with Rutgers University and Infinite Biologics in New Jersey and until now had been analyzing saliva samples collected at a free testing site in Duluth’.
The longer it takes for us to find out if somebody has this, the more they unknowingly spread it. So taking a test and waiting several days to get the results, that really impedes our ability to slow this down.
Gov. Tim Walz (source: Star Tribune)
According to MDH Assistant Commissioner Daniel Huff, when fully up and running, “the saliva testing program will add capacity of roughly 30,000 tests per day, bringing the state’s total testing capacity to 60,000 tests per day”.
“Accuracy of the new saliva collection method remains a concern. A rival saliva testing platform developed at Yale University showed 94% agreement when validated against PCR tests that used nasal swabs. A Canadian study found COVID-19 in 70 of 1,939 high-risk individuals whose saliva and nasal samples were tested. But in 22 of those cases, only one sample produced a positive,” writes Olson.
Coronavirus Pandemic Watch
According to the MDH latest tally (as of Oct 16, 11 a.m.) the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Minnesota are 119,396 (out of 2,448,315 tested) with 2,212 deaths. According to Johns Hopkins database (as of Oct 16, 2:24 p.m.) there are 8,027,412 confirmed covid19 infection with 218,266 deaths. Globally the covid19 virus has infected 39,126,112 with 1,101,007 deaths.