Following the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authorization of the first rapid at-home COVID-19 self-testing kit;

Dara Lo, Medical Device Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view:

“Point-of-care (POC) COVID-19 tests provide results in near real-time. Coupled with the ability to self-test in the comfort and safety of one’s own home, this type of COVID-19 test is likely to be an attractive complement to current laboratory-based COVID-19 diagnostic testing. GlobalData predicts that more POC COVID-19 tests will come to market as they have the ability to relieve an overburdened healthcare and laboratory testing system.

“According to GlobalData, COVID-19 POC tests account for more than a quarter of all PCR-based COVID-19 tests – also known as nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) – with single NAATs making up the majority of the COVID-19 diagnostic market and lastly multiplex NAATs holding a minor but significant share.

“The FDA authorized emergency use of Lucira’s at-home COVID-19 self-test, which is a single-use test available by prescription. The test uses loop-mediated isothermal amplification – a PCR alternative that operates at room temperature and can be run on a handheld battery powered device that returns results in 30 minutes or less.”