WADA’s Anti-Doping Salt Lake City Lab To Partner Stanford & USC In COVID-19 Community Testing

The 'novel coronavirus 2019- CoV' explained by the World Health Organisation - Photo Courtesy: WHO, YouTube

Anti-Doping Experts To Direct Resources & Research To community COVID-19 testing

The Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL), a laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah, accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is to join the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and local boards of health in a partnership to conduct community testing for coronavirus COVID-19 in the United States.

The Partnership for Clean Competition (PCC), which funds more than 70% of the world’s anti-doping research, is to direct its resources to the project. It will fund the test kits for the project to the tune of $120,000. Testing is scheduled to be undertaken throughout early April.

In a statement, the PCC noted: ” … with the current global pandemic, the non-profit will make funds available to one of its most frequent collaborators for critical COVID-19 research. The project will provide community testing and results for 15,000 people in highly-affected areas of the United States.

PCC Executive Director Michael Pearlmutter said:

“We work with some of the most advanced labs in the world, so we knew we already had exceptional partners to help fight this pandemic. COVID-19 demands all of our best efforts, and we’re proud to contribute to this global fight.”

SMRTL will leverage its expertise and contacts to conduct 15,000 FDA-approved COVID-19 tests across the general public and employees of athletic organizations, who will participate to ensure enough samples can be collected at the same time.

In a statement, the PCC noted: “The research will use point-of-care tests to give quick, accurate results for people in various locations throughout the country.”

Dr. Daniel Eichner, President of SMRTL, explained:

“The study will reveal the prevalence of COVID-19 infections. Importantly, the data will also determine how many people have been infected and recovered. Based on our observations of other outbreaks, many carriers don’t have a clinical reason to get tested, so they go undetected and may continue to put others at risk of infection.”

Professor Jay Bhattacharya, of Stanford, added: “The most important numbers to design good policy to deal with an epidemic are the number of people who are infected and who have been infected, but we do not know either number. The infrastructure we are building will provide the first population representative estimates of COVID-19 prevalence in the US.

“The results from the study will help public health authorities predict where the epidemic is most likely to flare up next, where resources should be diverted to best meet the needs of patients infected with COVID-19, and when it is safe to resume normal activity.”

Professor Neeraj Sood, of University of Southern California, added: “This study will provide critical information on the spread of COVID-19 in the US and its impact on deaths and hospitalizations. The study is needed so that policy decisions can be based on evidence about the risk of COVID-19 rather than fear about its potential effects.”

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