Impact and viability of a novel mass PCR testing method as a pandemic fighting s...
Impact and viability of a novel mass PCR testing method as a pandemic fighting strategy
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only affected our health, but also our lifestyles and our economies. Given its high non-symptomatic transmissibility, to stop a pandemic-causing pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 early on its tracks without ne...
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30/11/2026
Líder desconocido
3M€
Presupuesto del proyecto: 3M€
Líder del proyecto
Líder desconocido
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Sin fecha límite de participación.
Financiación
concedida
El organismo HORIZON EUROPE notifico la concesión del proyecto
el día 2022-11-15
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Información proyecto PCR-4-ALL
Duración del proyecto: 48 meses
Fecha Inicio: 2022-11-15
Fecha Fin: 2026-11-30
Líder del proyecto
Líder desconocido
Presupuesto del proyecto
3M€
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Sin fecha límite de participación.
Descripción del proyecto
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only affected our health, but also our lifestyles and our economies. Given its high non-symptomatic transmissibility, to stop a pandemic-causing pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 early on its tracks without needing to resort to economy-damaging measures, would have required a mass testing strategy very early on: according to some estimates up to 10% of a nation’s population should have been tested on a daily basis to achieve this. Given the exponential growth tendency of pandemic-causing respiratory viruses, as soon as such pathogen is identified a large-scale testing campaign should immediate be deployed (a strategy adopted successfully in very densely populated areas of China). And given the long periods required to develop other pandemic-fighting strategies (i.e. such as vaccines and quick diagnostic tests), PCR-based mass testing could be the ideal front line of defense, since it can be developed in only a few weeks after decoding the genetic map of the pathogen. But although PCR testing capacity has greatly been increased worldwide, regularly testing large fractions of the population would still remain prohibitively costly with current technology.
The PCR-4-ALL consortium (combining expertise in diagnostics, high-throughput-screening, virology, disease modelling, econometrics and digital health platforms) will aim to demonstrate the technical feasibility of carrying out population-wide PCR testing by demonstrating a capacity of >10^5 tests in a single day and platform, in an extremely cost-effective manner (at least 2 orders of magnitude cheaper than currently). We will, furthermore, evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing this strategy as the main pandemic-fighting measure by assessing its ability to minimize, or even prevent, the need to implement other costly and partially ineffective measures (i.e. lockdowns and vaccination campaigns).