[bamboozled]

If you had a plane with 200 passengers and two machines at the gate, this would take an additional 25 minutes to board the flight to test everyone, assuming there is no prep, which I’m sure there is. So realistically probably an hour.

It seems like a great idea in theory, but in practice? I’m not so sure.

Considering you can have the disease and present no symptoms but be contagious, you’d have to test everyone. I guess it is better than nothing in some cases.

[supportlocal4h]

Are you joking? This test could be done in less than the time it took me to take off my belt, my shoes, half my clothes, then empty my pockets, then pose for the body scanner, then get the wand, then the pat down, then recover my belongings and re-dress. That was my last experience at the airport.

You're complaining that a 15 minute covid test is just too much?

[bamboozled]

To start with, calm down!

I am not complaining. I'm speculating on the usefulness of thi s given that there is already a fair bit of overhead with boarding a plane in 2020 as opposed to say getting on a train.

There are a LOT of flights that happen each day, If you add up all the time combined, this would actually add a bit of overhead to an already rather long airport check-in process.

Not to mention the obvious which is that, if flights are still running at full pace, well you still have a lot of potentially infected people gathering in a rather confined area (airport), which is not really a good idea anyway.

This is obviously useful for something like triaging at a hospital, will wee see it at a check-in gate or at a bus stop? I doubt it.

Also that's clearly a lie it will take less time than for you to take off your belt, it clearly says it takes up to 15 minutes for a result. Don't talk nonsense.

[brokenkebab]

Just two words: cost and benefit can help you to understand the value behind quicker tests.

Flights are getting cancelled already, and some countries closed their airports at all. There are places where you can get stuck at a border crossing, or a roadblock if you have no proof of a recent medical checks. On this background any tests which add 15 min, or even 1 hr overhead sounds more like a solution, not a problem.

[40four]

No after thinking about it, I think @bamboozled is right. Testing everyone trying to board a flight, or cross a roadblock is not a feasible use case for this device. They will not be used like this. It isn’t a magic wand you can wave, there is a real bottleneck at the hardware level.

It’s not 15 mins from the time you get swabbed. It’s 15 once it’s prepared and put in the machine. Then there will be cleanup time after. Either way, even if you could run them through assembly line style every 15 minutes, 1 machine would take a whole 24 hours to process 100 people.

Another commenter @nkrumm pointed out multiple good use cases. I think they will be used to allow health care workers to make rapid decisions, for specific patients, likely in emergency situations. Not to process large volumes.

[brokenkebab]

>whole 24 hours to process >100 people.

That's excellent compared to inability to leave an area, or forced two weeks quarantine upon arrival, isn't?

[bamboozled]

If 7500 people land in Sydney tomorrow (I think that’s the real number about to enter mandatory quarantine) even in the best case scenario using one machine without considering preparation time it will take around 1875 hours to process everyone. Around 18 hours for ten machines running, even then, that’s without prep time.

That’s a pretty long customs line.

To add to that, at a accuracy rate of 99% there will be about 75 people who will go through with the wrong diagnosis unless retests are done, which will add extra time. I really don’t see this working out at that scale.

You’d really need a sub 60 second test for this to scale.

[catalogia]

Depending on how many people are waiting with you and how many machines they have running in parallel, it may still take two weeks for you to be cleared.

Better than nothing, but I wouldn't get too excited yet.