New COVID-19 test coming to Missouri (10-15-20)

Test is coming to missouri that health experts say will make it faster, easier and more convenient.

Good evening, i'm alan van zandt the announcement was made in kansas city this morning at truman medical center and those fighting the spread of the coronavirus say this will be an important, new tool for them to employ to fight the virus.

There's new technology out that health experts say could be a game changer in fighting covid 19.

A new test will soon be available -- one that doesn't involve poking a swab up a patient's nose almost all the way to the back of their head.

"the technology that this test uses utilizes saliva for the testing.

That'll be much different than our current process where we have to do nasal swabs.

This will be much more patient friendly.

Truman medical center chief medical officer dr. mark steele says the new technology means in addition to being more convienent, labs will be able to process thousands of more tests much more rapidly."obviously, the more testing we do, the earlier we catch people with covid and able ot get them properly isolated and then do contact tracing."the new test will need a special machine to evaluate the saliva for the covid virus.

The technology was developed at washington university in st.

Louis and four such machines are planned to be deployed across the state over the next several weeks.."as we head into the fall, we're redoubling and accelerating our efforts to expand access to testing in the state.

In missouri, where once only 2,000 tests were being analyzed per week, the state is now at 125,000 per week and primed to go much higher."i think we'll be in every school system in the next two weeks.

Every school system in missouri will have the ability to do tests internally.the governor saying this is another way to show that missouri has been ahead of the curve in fighting the coronavirus."i think that missouri, compared to other states, we've been on the front lines from day 1 and doing the best that we can to take care of people and we're going to continue to do that."

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