Push for rapid testing and expansion

Diatherix is testing as many as four thousand a day and they want to double that

Discharged the new "safer at home" order i now in place and some businesses opened back up this evening.

More will open tomorrow.

That means more people will be interacting, potentially increasing their chances to become infected with coronavirus.

And that could lead to a need for more tests and faster results.

Waay 31's will robinson-smith is live at the hudson alpha campus in huntsville with more on efforts to make that happen sooner rather than later.

Unlike some other states, alabama doesn't publish a breakdown on testing by state lab versus a private lab like diatherix eurfins here at hudson alpha chief scientific officer dr. jeffrey wisotskey says right now diatherix is testing as many as four thousand tests per day.

He says they want to double that dr. jeff wisotzkey, chief scientific officer, diatherix the more people that we can test, the more that we can put together all of the information that we need to track the virus, to track the spread of the disease and know where it is and the impact that our social distancing and our other preventative measures are having.

Dr. wisotzkey says a pair of challenges facing labs across the country are finding qualified people and having a steady supply chain.

The former hasn't been a problem for diatherix, but keeping suppliers is like hitting a moving target.

Dr. jeff wisotzkey, chief scientific officer, diatherix because many times, you have to change products to go to another vendor or to another type of reagent.

And when you do that, you have to start over to the place where you have to re-validate the test to make sure that any change that you make doesn't affect the performance of your test.

Dr. wisotzkey says ramping up testing here is not only important for alabama, but also for the rest of the country.

Only about 17 percent of the testing done at diatherix is with samples from alabama.

Dr. jeff wisotzkey, chief scientific officer, diatherix we're running a lot of tests every day right now.

If we can double that, that would be great.

Any increase in testing that we can do would be utilized and would add to the solution for the nation.

As people start to return to work in greater numbers, dr. wisotzkey says there's still work to be done to determine the best strategy for balancing that with the need for more and faster testing dr. jeff wisotzkey, chief scientific officer, diatherix i don't think we've been able to really define what the best testing strategies are for people to return to work after they've been infected or to clear people to go to work with the question, 'are they infected?'

We're still learning a lot.

I think antibody testing will play a roll in that along with the molecular pcr testing that a lot of laboratories are doing right now.

As far as a specific timeline for "widespread testing" goes, dr. wisotzkey says that's more difficult to characterize, but says labs are working to increase capacity every day for both diagnostic tests as well as antibody tests.

Reporting live in huntsville, will robinson-smith, waay 31 news.