Army lab developing COVID-19 test for people without symptoms, key to ‘normal’ return
Researchers at the Army’s premiere infectious diseases lab are working on a more sensitive test that could detect the coronavirus in people who have no symptoms – a critical step in getting the nation back to “a new sense of normal,” the lab’s chief viral expert told McClatchy.
The experimental work underway at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland comes amid increasing concern among public health officials that existing tests are producing false negatives, risking continued spread of the virus and exposure for people with more vulnerable immune systems.
Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, has repeatedly cautioned Americans that, “if you don’t have symptoms, don’t get a test,” as shortages of tests persist around the country. But medical experts on his team say that greater availability of precise testing will hasten the country’s return to normal operations.
The Army scientists are focused on creating a “more sensitive” coronavirus test than those currently approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said John Dye, chief of viral immunology at Fort Detrick’s research institute.
“Maybe those asymptomatic people have a very low amount of virus – which is why they’re asymptomatic – and you can’t really tell, they don’t even become positive,” he said.
The experimental test is part of a larger project at Fort Detrick to develop methods to identify all individuals who have had COVID-19, which will be the key to returning Americans “back to whatever the new normal is,” Dye said.
“Scientists around the world, including researchers at our institute, are trying to develop the tests that will allow us to determine is someone infected, is someone not infected, to a very sensitive degree,” Dye said.
If an individual has had the coronavirus, that individual should have antibodies and likely be protected in the future, Dye said.
Dye cautioned, however, that if a person does get tested and is discovered to have the antibodies, it is not an all-clear because they could have developed a medical condition in the meantime that would make them less able to fight off the coronavirus if they are exposed again.
While Fort Detrick has also developed its own antibody test to determine whether an individual has ever had the coronavirus, it is still investigating the extent to which people develop immunity to the virus after initial exposure. Reports have emerged in recent days of individuals falling ill a second time to the coronavirus, or testing positive a second time after receiving a negative test inbetween.
The lab is not developing a vaccine, but will be involved in the process of testing vaccine candidates produced by other labs, Dye said.
The lab is deeply involved in testing potential remedies to help people get over the virus. It has begun testing hydroxychloroquine, among hundreds of other drugs, to see how effective they are at stopping coronavirus infections in cells. It is the first step in a long process that would then move on to animal and human testing, to discover what the most effective treatment will be for people sickened by COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
“We are testing hundreds of drugs right now, and that is one of the drugs we are testing,” Dye said. “We take cells that are very permissible to the infection and we provide the virus to that particular cell. It’s in a little well. Then we actually add the therapeutic, whether it’s an antibody, whether it’s hydroxychloroquine to that well, and what we look for is a decrease in the viral infection.”
In the testing wells, Dye said researchers watch to see whether the injected drug actually stops the virus.
“When a virus sits down on those cells, and actually infects that cell and kills that cell, it would actually create a hole in the layer of cells on that plate. So you can actually count the number of holes and it tells you how much infection is there. So you look to see if there is a decrease in the number of holes when you add that drug.”
The lab still has to do more testing to see which drugs are most effective against the virus to eventually select those best suited for human testing, he said.
Hydroxychloroquine – a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat malaria, but has not gone through clinical trials testing its impacts on coronavirus patients – has been advocated as a potential treatment by President Donald Trump, who has cited anecdotal reports of success.
“I’m not a doctor – I’m just saying, we hear great results,” Trump said earlier this month when discussing the drug.
The long-term goal is to develop a treatment people could take orally. But for now, most of the treatments under assessment would be administered intravenously in a hospital, Dye said.
The lab has had access to coronavirus samples for about a month, and has also begun looking into how the virus behaves at different temperatures and on different surfaces. The virus struggles at higher temperatures, Dye said, which is why when a patient with coronavirus has a fever, it is the body trying to make the environment inhospitable to the virus.
Dye is hopeful that testing and effective social distancing may allow for a return to some normalcy by June or July, even if everyone will still need to be careful.
“I was telling my wife the other day that I was hoping maybe by the Fourth of July I’ll be able to have my father and her parents over to our house for a Fourth of July picnic because we’re hoping maybe we’ll be in a situation where we can start to relax some,” he said.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 3:32 PM with the headline "Army lab developing COVID-19 test for people without symptoms, key to ‘normal’ return."
