Three lessons for the pilot program to to scale up home use of Covid-19 rapid tests

3 lessons for the effort to scale up Covid-19 rapid tests The slow and sometimes troubled rollout of a Covid-19 rapid test pilot program offers three key lessons for scaling up the use of the tests. Erin Mershon STAT

...the pilot program’s slow and sometimes troubled rollout still offers some key lessons about how to scale up and improve the piecemeal national testing efforts in the United States. Part of the current difficulties stem from supply issues — despite the Biden administration’s efforts to scale up testing, including billions in purchase orders, there remains a shortage in at-home tests across the country. But other challenges have had more to do with the perception of the tests.

“It’s taken time for the public to get comfortable with rapid tests,” said Rachael Fleurence, senior advisor to the Immediate Office of the Director at the National Institutes of Health. “The culture of home testing is not something that we’ve had to reckon with before at this scale.”

STAT interviewed program leaders and testing experts and synthesized three key takeaways from the ongoing work of the Say Yes! Covid Test initiative, a joint project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH. The program has distributed millions of at-home rapid tests to counties in Michigan, Tennessee, and North Carolina, along with three other states, targeting underserved communities. On Monday, it began distributing tests in the Louisville, Ky. metro area. ...