Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, is promoting the concept of low-cost, do-it-yourself (DIY) coronavirus kits.
Garcetti has teamed up with health experts, bioscience executives, government leaders, and philanthropists to create DIY kits that do not require lab equipment or special instruments.
READ MORE: California surpasses New York state in confirmed virus cases
The at-home COVID-19 testing kits would allow real-time detection. Current testing kits rely on laboratories to process samples and typically take days or weeks to return results, according to Reuters.
“If we get this right, we could be doing as many as a million tests a week using paper strip testing just here in Los Angeles,” Garcetti said.
The DIY kits could be the best option to stop the spread of the virus, according to advocates like Michael Mina, a Harvard University epidemiologist.
“This is something we can actually do at warp speed,” Mina said. He also mentioned that these tests could be produced for as little as $1 a piece.
READ MORE: California reports record high number of coronavirus deaths
For COVID-19 screening, the gold standard of testing is called a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test, which looks for traces of viral genetic material, Reuters reported.
Experts say quick and simple kits cannot meet this gold standard, and are generally prone to false-negative results.
As theGrio previously reported, California is currently the state with the most coronavirus cases.
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