The Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for a COVID-19 test at home.
LabCorp’s Pixel home collection kit received the FDA’s emergency use authorization this week. Once the tests are available, and it could be a few weeks, patients will use a nasal swab and then mail the sample to a LabCorp address for testing. The kits come with a special cotton swab designed only for the test, so other swabs will not be allowed because of concerns about faulty test results.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross says it plans to offer antibody tests to people who believe they may have been infected by coronavirus earlier this year and would like to donate their blood plasma.
Doctors hope so-called convalescent plasma, or plasma collected from people who have recovered, will have antibodies that can help develop immunity to COVID-19.
