needs to rethink its approach to testing for COVID-19, experts say, by shifting to cheaper tests that can return results in less than an hour, potentially finding people when they are most infectious and containing outbreaks before they explode. .

If you want to identify whether they're infectious or not going to go out and spread to other people, these tests are actually quite good,” said Dr.

Harvard’s Michael Mina envisions a $1 antigen paper strip test — similar to pregnancy tests — that could be manufactured by the government and distributed to millions of people to regularly screen themselves. .

While the at-home rapid tests are less sensitive than the lab tests, Ferré said they could be of critical help to the United States

“A test like ours is very effective in detecting high viral loads, meaning people like super spreaders,” Henri Ferré said. “We think this is a very effective screening tool to separate infected individuals who have the highest chance of spreading virus and continuing the outbreak versus people who don’t.”

Regular screening using rapid tests will do a better job of finding people who have COVID-19 but aren’t showing symptoms, experts say

Without regular screening, an asymptomatic person might not even have reason to get a test, and could potentially spread it to more vulnerable people who could experience serious illness or even die. 

If moving to a less sensitive test “means we can do 10 times as many tests, from the screening point of view, that’s a great trade-off to make” because you’ll catch more infections than if you tested fewer people using a higher sensitivity lab test, he said. 

"The key thing rapid turnaround tests do is they give you highly sensitive results around the time you're most infectious to others," he added

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two point of care tests, by Quidel Corporation and BD, that detects COVID-19 antigens