FDA authorizes Abbott’s fast $5 Covid-19 test

Even thought this is good news, I don't think it'll do much about getting us back to normal life. The high sensitivity rate they report is after "symptom onset."

We really need a test with a high sensitivity rate for presymptomatic and asymptomatic carriers to make a big difference day to day.

Certainly a step in the right direction, but only a step.

It's not scaled out yet, but this is the best news I've heard in quite a while on the COVID-19 front. The ineffectiveness of our current mitigation attempts in the US largely stem from the long turnaround times and limited availability of tests. Test and trace doesn't work if you can't test in a timely fashion.

50M tests per month is still quite a bit short of where we would need to be for a full reopening, but it's more than twice as much as the rest of our testing combined.