时代周刊:抗原检测 更好的检测方式(1)（在线收听）

A BETTER WAY TO TEST

更好的检测方式

By Dr. Ashish K. Jha

文/阿施施·K·杰哈医生

Imagine spitting on a special strip of paper every morning

想象一下，每天早上往一张特殊的纸条上吐点唾沫，

and being told two minutes later whether you were positive for COVID-19.

两分钟后就能告知你你的新冠肺炎检测是否呈阳性。

If everyone in the U.S. did this daily,

如果所有美国人都能每天坚持这样检测，

we would dramatically drop our transmission rates and bring the pandemic under control.

我们就能大幅降低国内的新冠传播率，控制住这场大流行。

Schools and businesses could reopen with the peace of mind that infectious individuals had been identified.

学校和企业就可以放心地复产复工复学，因为被感染者都会被识别出来。

Michael Mina of the Harvard School of Public Health has been a major proponent of this idea,

哈佛大学公共卫生学院的迈克尔·米纳一直都在推动这一理念，

and has pushed the idea of a test that costs as little as $1,

而他推动的检测办法成本低至1美元，

which the government could mass-produce and provide free of charge to every one.

政府可以批量生产并免费提供给所有人。

In fact, these technologies exist today.

事实上，这些技术已经面世了。

Antigen tests are significantly cheaper and faster than the RT-PCR tests

RT-PCR检测是美国目前最核心的检测方式，但其地位已经不保。

that are at the heart of America's current testing infrastructure, which is collapsing.

抗原检测比RT-PCR检测便宜得多，速度也快得多。

As coronavirus cases surge around the country,

全国各地的新冠病毒病例都在激增，

laboratories are facing crippling shortages of key supplies and growing backlogs of samples.

实验室检测用的关键物资已经严重短缺，样本积压日益严重。

In many states, it can take 10 to 15 days to get test results—

许多州检测结果等待时间都长达10~15天——

rendering these tests useless as a tool to prevent transmission and bring the pandemic under control.

如此一来，检测便对预防传播和控制大流行毫无用处。

For most people, the peak period of infectiousness lasts about a week.

就大多数人而言，感染最严重的阶段将持续时间为一周左右。

And in the middle of this testing collapse,

就在检测工作面临崩溃之际，

cities and towns are preparing to return millions of children to school this fall with neither the intention nor the capability to test them.

各大城镇却已经开始准备在今秋开学期将数百万儿童送回学校，尽管学校即没有打算，也没有能力为孩子们提供检测。

At this critical moment in our nation's fight against COVID-19,

我们国家的抗疫工作已经进入关键时刻，

it is time to radically rethink our approach to testing.

我们也是时候重新审视我们的检测方式了。

The way forward is not a perfect test, but one offering rapid results.

我们的出路并不是没有缺陷的检测方式，而是能够快速给出结果的检测方式。

Over the past months, much of the conversation around testing has focused on accuracy.

过去几个月，围绕检测的大部分讨论都集中在了检测的准确性上。

Tests have been touted for their high sensitivity,

有些检测因高灵敏度备受吹捧，

and the FDA requires diagnostic tests to correctly identify 95% of positive cases.

FDA也要求检测准确率达到95%。

The intuition behind this is clear:

这一要求背后的逻辑很明显：

we want a test that won't miss positive cases and send infected individuals back into the world to spread the virus.

我们想要的是一种不会遗漏阳性病例，将已经感染的人送回人群中继续扩散病毒的检测方法。