The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced it will commit $5 million to help Seattle-area health agencies detect and mitigate the spread of coronavirus in the region more quickly. Part of this effort will involve deploying at-home test kits.
According to reporting by the Seattle Times, the idea is for those who fear they have been infected by the virus to go online to complete a questionnaire. If their symptoms are consistent with COVID-19, they’ll be able to request a test kit, which will arrive at their home within two hours. Individuals can then swab the inside of their nose to create a sample that a health professional will pick up and take to a lab. Results will be available within one or two days and shared with health officials who notify those who test positive.
The goal of the effort, which is not yet underway but could begin soon, is to track the virus and prevent it from spreading even further.
“Early detection plays an essential role in helping public health authorities identify and treat people with COVID-19, take steps to safely isolate them and reduce transmission within the community,” Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said in a statement.
This initiative stems from the Seattle Flu Study, a two-year-old project out of the University of Washington that has received $20 million in funding from Gates Ventures, the private office of Bill Gates. The study was originally developed to track the spread of infectious diseases through home-testing kits, but has since shifted gears in response to the coronavirus epidemic.
Seattle has become an epicenter for the outbreak in the United States. As of Tuesday morning, there were more than 160 reported cases of COVID-19 in Washington state, while the state’s death toll from the virus stands at 22. However, at least one health expert estimates Seattle may have about 600 infected people. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday night, Governor Jay Inslee said he believed as many as 1,000 Washington residents might have the virus.
Scott Dowell, who is heading the coronavirus response at the Gates Foundation, told the Times that, while at-home testing will be limited to Seattle for the time being, it could eventually expand statewide and beyond. He also said that, while the goal is to process thousands of these at-home tests a day, it remains to be seen when testing can actually begin. Software needs to be updated and the questionnaire needs to be finalized.
The foundation’s work on COVID-19 extends beyond the at-home testing effort in Seattle. On Tuesday, the organization also announced it is partnering with Mastercard and Wellcome to offer $125 million in new and previously earmarked funding to identify potential treatments, speed up their development and prepare for the manufacturing of doses to be administered worldwide. The effort has been dubbed the “COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.”
“The COVID-19 epidemic reminds us that infectious disease respects no boundaries, and no community is immune to the threat of a global pandemic,” Suzman said in a statement. “We can, however, take steps to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in Seattle and around the world, and we are ready to support these efforts here in our home community.”
