Want to keep track of our work? Sign up for PoP BC updates, actions, public health information, and announcements.

The New England Journal of Medicine: Rethinking Covid-19 Test Sensitivity — A Strategy for Containment

It’s time to change how we think about the sensitivity of testing for Covid-19. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the scientific community are currently almost exclusively focused on test sensitivity, a measure of how well an individual assay can detect viral protein or RNA molecules. Critically, this measure neglects the context of how the test is being used. Yet when it comes to the broad screening the United States so desperately needs, context is fundamental. The key question is not how well molecules can be detected in a single sample but how effectively infections can be detected in a population by the repeated use of a given test as part of an overall testing strategy — the sensitivity of the testing regimen.

A regimen of regular testing works as a sort of Covid-19 filter, by identifying, isolating, and thus filtering out currently infected persons, including those who are asymptomatic. Measuring the sensitivity of a testing regimen or filter requires us to consider a test in context: how often it’s used, to whom it’s applied, when in the course of an infection it works, and whether its results are returned in time to prevent spread.1-3

Archived Briefings from Protect Our Province BC

As we start a new school year, clean air in schools is a vital issue not only because of the health effects from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and air pollution, but because of the direct link to the ability of children to learn. Hear about the new recommendations for Indoor Air Quality in Schools and Childcare Facilities from Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health.
“For some of the most vulnerable patients, the air in the hospital can be deadlier than the diagnosis that brought them in” Join Protect our Province BC and Drs. Susan Lee, Jean Warneboldt, and Victor Leung to hear about their advocacy, their struggles and successes in improving the air quality in different BC Health Authorities. Why are different healthcare administrations within BC treating this critical topic so differently - in one, obstructing and blocking and in another rewarding and awarding?
In honor of February being Heart Month, cardiologist Dr. Leslie Kasza joined Protect our Province BC’s Dr. Susan Kuo for a discussion on COVID-19’s impact on heart health and how you can reduce your risk. Don’t be fooled into thinking it won’t happen to you because you are _________, fill in the blank: young, healthy vaccinated and/or you only had a mild infection, etc.

More News from Protect Our Province BC

No lessons were learned. This year, despite the lessons that could have been learned and implemented, BC public health was as ill prepared as it was last year for the viral "respiratory season”. * And so on January 9, a new record number of hospital admissions was set at 10,345 . For more up to… Continue reading State of Public Health in BC
Second in a series of two posts by an Alberta mom. Find the first post here: No One Is Listening To Me Image: The Rona Lisa by Rosie Pidgeon, a young Belfast art student living with Long Covid.  To view her artwork, please visit @art_byrosie_ Alberta Long Covid Kids During the Delta wave in October… Continue reading No More Stolen Childhoods
Alberta Mom Photo: @BerlinBuyers My first confirmed Covid infection was in fall 2022 at a time when the few Covid protections we had left only applied to healthcare settings. I knew I was at higher risk of developing Long Covid as I am a working age woman. This terrified me as my son had already had… Continue reading No One is Listening to Me