CRISPR Diagnostics (for COVID-19)

CRISPR–Cas12-based detection of SARS-CoV-2

Applied technologies for detection of COVID are basically PCR molecular assays and immunoassays. However, CRISPR developments are entering into diagnostics and you may find the first example in Nature.

We report development of a rapid (<40 accurate="" and="" as12-based="" assay="" br="" crispr="" detection="" easy-to-implement="" extracts.="" flow="" for="" from="" lateral="" min="" of="" respiratory="" rna="" sars-cov-2="" swab="">We validated our method using contrived reference samples and clinical samples from patients in the United States, including 36 patients with COVID-19 infection and 42 patients with other viral respiratory infections. Our CRISPR-based DETECTR assay provides a visual and faster alternative to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT–PCR assay, with 95% positive predictive agreement and 100% negative predictive agreement.

The role of CRISPR in diagnostics tests is going to increase.

Daido Moriyama 

Back to work

NATIONAL COVID-19 TESTING ACTION PLAN

Some papers:
Rockefeller Foundation has issued a document of interest about testing and going back to work.
AEI document here.
Center for American Progress document here.
Duke University here.
Harvard University here.
Johns Hopkins University here.

How coronavirus affects the body

From FT The medical mysteries of coronavirus

A known unknown

Coronavirus and the Limits of Economics
Why standard economic theories have no answers for this kind of crisis

You'll find an interesting article in FP

Economists have long made the distinction between uncertainty and risk. Uncertainty is typically understood as involving outcomes that cannot straightforwardly be assigned a probability, unlike risk. Economics offers limited resources to understand how to make decisions in the presence of fundamental uncertainty. But a still deeper form of uncertainty is one in which the possible outcomes cannot easily be anticipated at all. Such a wildly unpredictable outcome has come to be popularly known in recent years as a black swan event.

 The coronavirus pandemic might at first appear to have been such a black swan event, but that claim does not withstand scrutiny: The possibility of such a threat was long recognized by experts. This recognition led to scenarios being discussed at the highest levels of governments. The possibility of a pandemic was therefore a “known unknown” rather than an “unknown unknown.”

Consider that an economy cannot be separated from society: It is socially embedded. The notion that the economy can be analyzed independently of the public health, political, or social processes—often promoted by the dominant tradition in economics and reflected in general equilibrium theory—is shown by the pandemic to be not merely fragile but false.

PS D Rumsfeld stated:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Galeria Marlborough

The current COVID-19 test mess

Guidelines on COVID-19 in vitro diagnostic tests and their performance

If you receive a document with the title Guidelines on COVID-19 in vitro diagnostic tests and their performance you may expect to read about Guidelines and Performance. Unfortunately, you'll not find them in such document. After 2 months and a half, and an absolute market and regulatory chaos, the European Union releases a document that says that in the future they will provide some analysis of the situation. Meanwhile the regulation is the one enacted in 1998, that it was updated in 2017, but it will not be applied until 2022!!!
It could seem a joke if we were not talking about issues of life and death. The health and the economy is affected by his situation and unless we are able to asses the current extent of pandemics and immunity, we will not succeed from the current lockdown. Live and livelihood deserve better european policy makers.

Carlos Díaz

The viruses to come

Crisis in the Red Zone. THE STORY OF THE DEADLIEST EBOLA OUTBREAK IN HISTORY, AND OF THE VIRUSES TO COME

If you want to read a story of ebola outbreak and its implications beyond it, this is the book you have to read. It may be translated into a screenplay of a film.

At the end it says:

A family of viruses called the morbilliviruses is regarded by some experts as a leading candidate for the emergence of a previously unknown Level 4 monster that travels in the air. If there was no vaccine or drug for it, and if it was highly infectious, and if it floated out of peoples mouths, the virus could go around the world in a few weeks, traveling inside people who are flying on airplanes and walking through airport terminals, breathing. 

Glups!

A pandemic is not a war

Deadliest Enemy. Our War Against Killer Germs

Key messages from the book:

To review, our greatest threats are:
1. Pathogens of pandemic potential, which essentially means influenza and the downstream effects of antimicrobial resistance.
2. Pathogens of critical regional importance, which include Ebola, coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, other viruses such as Lassa and Nipah, and Aedes-transmitted diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, and Zika.
3. Bioterrorism and dual-use research of concern (DURC), and gain-of-function research of concern (GOFRC).
4. Endemic diseases that continue to have a major impact on the world’s health, particularly among emerging nations, including malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, viral hepatitis, childhood diarrheal diseases, and bacterial pneumonia.

Priority 1: Create a Manhattan Project–like program to secure a game-changing influenza vaccine and vaccinate the world.
Priority 2: Establish an international organization to urgently address all aspects of antimicrobial resistance.
Priority 3: Support and substantially expand the mission and scope of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI) to fast-track comprehensive public-private vaccine research, development, manufacturing, and distribution for diseases of current or potential critical regional importance.
Priority 4: Launch the Global Alliance for Control of Aedes-Transmitted Diseases (GAAD) and coordinate with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s malaria strategy, “Accelerate to Zero.
Priority 5: Fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan report of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense.
Priority 6: Establish an international organization similar to the National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to minimize the use of DURC and GOFRC to transmit pathogens of pandemic potential
Priority 7: Recognize that TB, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other life-threatening infectious diseases remain major global health problems
Priority 8: Anticipate climate-change effects
Priority 9: Adopt a One Health approach to human and animal diseases throughout the world.