Harvard Immunologist Champions At-Home Covid Tests to Beat the Pandemic
Michael Mina says the U.S. should be following in the footsteps of Germany and the U.K. in making low-cost, rapid tests readily available to consumers.
On a sunny Monday in mid-September, scientist Michael Mina sits down at his desk at Harvard for the first time since the pandemic began. It’s been so long that, through the window behind him, an entire gleaming, 11-story building has sprung up. A neglected office plant is brown and withering, and a stack of scientific journals nearby date back to February and March 2020.
The 37-year-old epidemiologist, immunologist, and physician says it didn’t have to be this way: Workplaces, schools, event spaces, and more that have been desolate for better than a year could have stayed open—and safely—with a technology that’s been here all along. Mina has been an early and tireless champion of inexpensive, do-it-yourself SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests that can return a positive or negative result in about 15 minutes, arguing for their wider deployment in op-ed articles, on Twitter, and in conversations with health authorities.