375 - All Things COVID-19 Testing With Dr. Gigi Gronvall
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2021
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where are we with testing technology? Why is the demand for testing surging and are there enough tests? When is the best time to use at-home testing given the cost? What's the difference between PCR and rapid antigen tests and how accurate are they in different circumstances? Dr. Gigi Gronvall gives an update on testing and answers questions with Stephanie Desmon. Note: Dr. Gronvall references the Center For Health Security's Testing Toolkit resource, which you can find here https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/covid-19TestingToolkit/.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.7 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Roggers, producer of public health on call. Today, Stephanie Desmond |
| 0:51.8 | talks to Johns Hopkins COVID-19 expert, Gigi Granval about all things COVID testing. |
| 0:57.7 | Why there's higher demand for tests now, why there may be test kit shortages, and why more testing is key to slowing the spread of the disease. |
| 1:06.2 | Let's listen. |
| 1:08.1 | Gigi Granval, thanks much for coming back to the program. |
| 1:12.4 | Thank you so much for having me. |
| 1:17.7 | So today I want to talk about testing, all things testing when it comes to COVID-19. |
| 1:31.5 | And I guess I wanted to start with President Biden's vaccine mandates mean there's going to be a lot of testing, a lot more testing as people perhaps choose to go the testing route rather than the vaccination route. And I'm wondering what that means. Are there |
| 1:37.9 | enough tests for everybody? Well, it's not even just the people who decide that they don't want |
| 1:43.2 | to be vaccinated and will opt for the testing instead. |
| 1:47.0 | It's also, there's a lot more support for school-based testing. |
| 1:51.6 | And so there's going to be testing of all kinds that are, that's going to be ramped up. |
| 1:56.6 | So, yeah, I mean, there's a big ramp up of testing. |
| 2:03.5 | So far, it doesn't seem like there's any shortage of PCR tests available and or possible. But the other kind of test, the rapid test, |
| 2:12.7 | the one that gives you results in 20 minutes or so, that has been a little bit in short supply these days. |
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