A team of researchers and clinicians from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and the Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) are working to design, validate, and implement an ‘end-to-end’ clinical pathology laboratory solution that will allow for the testing, treatment selection, and monitoring of the course of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19).
Using a high-throughput automated molecular assay, Mount Sinai Hospital clinical laboratories are currently testing several hundred patients per day for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, to identify positive versus negative cases. The testing effort will ramp up to a capacity of 1,000 tests per day. Mount Sinai follows New York State guidelines and is only testing patients with trouble breathing and/or moderate-to-severe respiratory symptoms at this time.
For patients who test positive for SARS-CoV-2, a quantitative assay designed and implemented by a multidisciplinary Mount Sinai team is capable of measuring whether the patient’s viral load is high or low. The viral load findings will be studied to ascertain whether they assist in managing the disease and aiding in the selection of effective treatments.
ISMMS and MSH researchers are also tackling some other important tests to help in the fight against covid-19, including a blood test to measure immunity in recovered covid-19 patients and a test that can determine when a covid-19 patient is entering a dangerous point in their disease.
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