So while we are awaiting TGA approval and EU commons entry trials, I thought it might be time to have a look around at the competition out there for Covid tests. Given a few have raised their belief Covid is a lost opportunity despite case numbers still stubbornly high and new variants on their way it would be good to see what's out there.
It is really hard to find comparison data on the several thousand different LAMP, PCR, Breath, saliva, nasal, antibody rapids, Antigen rapids and compare accuracy and speed etc.
However it seems the clever cats at Arizona State University and The Rockefeller Foundation in the US, have decided to make it really easy for anyone searching for tests and how they all compare and perform. (what champions they are go Sun Devils)
The new testing commons search they have developed for the US of A provides everything you need to drill down the data and separate the wheat from the chaff, haven't seen anything this comprehensive before so great to see the US developing their own commons list as have the EU. This one however makes it really easy to gauge where Eugeni sits on performance, speed, accuracy amongst all the other tests out there.
You can set various parameters to separate various data sets. For example there are currently a total of 2826 tests available this is a combination of antigen, antibody, PCR rapids, LAMP, breath, etc, etc.
Lets play a fun game you can play along with below open the ASU site in a seperate browser and follow the steps below--
Step 1/ change the first parameter that is rather important sensitivity 97.3% as we don't want to use tests that are as good as a coin toss....wow that wipes out 3/4 of them you will be left with 475 that are as good as Eugeni
Step 2/ change specificity to 99.6% as we don't want to be isolating if we are not actually infectious......BOOM there go 90% of them and are now 281 remaining as good as Eugeni
Step 3/ change the time to result to under 30mins as its kinda not fun waiting over an hour for a result I have stuff to do..... now its getting interesting 61 remaining that could compete with Eugeni
Step 4/ We also don't want to test for antibodies as we all know by the time you have antibodies, you have had time to potentially infect an entire flood disaster management cabinet in Qld, along with the president of Nauru & the entire Australian defence cabinet (looking at you Scomo) so lets change it to only test for antigen....hmmmm what's that only 19 left... this is getting rather interesting I like this game....
Step 5/ We also don't want to be fussing about with too many items, processes and making this all complicated to carry out our little test, so lets do away with ELISA platforms and lock in lateral flow what's that there are now 10 tests.... 10 out of 2826 globally but I am sure we can do better then top 10.
Step 5/ So lets lock it in as a POC test so we can track it at point of care not let people do it themselves and lose all this great data....we are now left with 7...
Step 6/ Surely it cant get better then 7 available globally...but wait there's more... lets now lock in CE marked not under development as Lev pointed out last year we dont want to looking for a PDF concept.......Now there are 6 left
Step 7/ Finally if we take it from a swab not saliva (as we all know the issues with saliva, eating, drinking time you need to wait before sampling how inconvenient I just had a schooner and a bag of peanuts and now I need to wait...get stuffed ) then we are now left with 5 in the entire planet there are 5 and Eugeni is one of them. Final part of this fun game.....Guess where the other 4 are made?????.....if you guessed China you win a prize.
If you are a very large government organization looking to fund scale up of the worlds LEADING test in Australia, EU, UK, or USA accepting current geopolitical climate and likely virus origin are you more likely to fund an Australian made test or a Chinese made test?
Should also be noted that current Anteo Eugeni results were with VTM interference verified by Doherty Institute (that mob that are validating all the current rubbish sold in Australia) personally expecting real world use results without VTM to be better IF Anteo can prove existing results they are at a minimum top 5 however the other 4 are Chinese tests the claims of which seem rather unverified independently anywhere....
If Anteo can get to 98% and 99% they are top 2 and only competitor is Changzhou Biowin Pharmaceutical Co claiming 100% and 100% on an analogue nasal test.....yeah righto.....really struggling to find any large clinical studies on this one....it also is not part of EU commons or any other major organization independent verification I can find.
A lot hinges on these trials currently being done in Spain and Melbourne but if they can prove that the Doherty studies are accurate or eclipse them then it will have been proven this is the worlds most accurate test for Covid and serious competition for Lab based slow PCR.
Lets imagine our 'hopes and prayers' Prime Minister trusted science as much as he trusted religion and was using Eugeni every 2 days instead of the inaccurate imported tests he has so cleverly procured, he would not have been out infecting community & very important people doing amazing work in QLD flood recovery management center, or meeting with the defence cabinet......
Any wonder Operon are scaling up massively and Anteo have leased an enormous factory for one little strip machine....water is going to find its own level here.
Open the link, have a play with the parameters then decide is it worth more then a market cap of $370M....I know my answer.... also heard that Anteotech might be able to do stuff with batteries but that is a whole lot of other research for another day. GLTA
(20min delay)
