Mayo Clinic announced that it has developed a test to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
The individuals undergoing the Mayo Clinic test could receive their results within 24 hours, according to Mayo Clinic’s clinical virology laboratory director Matthew Binnicker. That compares with the several days to a week patients have been waiting for COVID-19 test results across the U.S.
All positive samples from the Mayo Clinic test are slated to be sent to the Minnesota Department of Health or CDC for follow-up testing and confirmation, according to the Rochester, Minn.-based healthcare system.
The fully validated test, titled “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS CoV-2), Molecular Detection,” will be used to provide data to the FDA for review and emergency use authorization, according to a news release.
“This test should help ease some of the burden that is currently being felt at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state public health laboratories,” Mayo Clinic Laboratories president Dr. William Morice II said in the release. “We are doing everything we can to help relieve the burden during this time to provide answers for patients here in Rochester and around the world.”
The real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is designed to identify SARS-CoV-2 from a variety of clinical samples and has been validated to test respiratory samples collected from suspected COVID-19 patients. Those samples might include such as nasopharyngeal swabs, sputum, throat swabs, bronchoalveolar lavages and bronchial washings.
Mayo Clinic said it intends to follow the CDC’s recommendations for testing the virus, which would allow U.S. health care providers to send testing directly to Mayo Clinic, which will also offer the SARS-CoV-2 assay to existing clients in the U.S. and abroad if possible.
