An Egyptian doctor, Heba Mostafa, was cited as contributing to a test for diagnosing the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Mostafa is the director of the molecular virology lab and assistant professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Al-Masry Al-Youm contacted Mostafa to talk about the latest developments and steps underway regarding the test.
The coronavirus test was developed quickly, she said, after the genome had been mapped in January by Chinese researchers. Immediately afterwards the diagnostic and research laboratories began developing the test s components, especially in China.
She added that the test s purpose is to find the virus s genome in a patient sample, whether via nose or mouth. Mostafa said that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also developed a test, but it wasn t available for all labs.
“At Johns Hopkins University, once the government allowed the laboratories to start developing its diagnostic tests to expand the diagnosis of the virus, we were one of the first academic laboratories to develop the test, and thus expanded the scope of diagnosis in Maryland,” Mostafa said.
She said that though there is still no approved drug to treat the virus, the initial results of Remdesivir are promising.
Experiments for treatment have now begun clinical research, with Remdesivir being the current treatment tried at this stage, alongside research on the use of antibodies from patients who contracted the virus and recovered.
The virus has yet to mutate especially as genome examinations of samples from patients in China, Europe and America are all similar, Mostafa noted.
She also dismissed claims that the coronavirus was man-made, explaining that the virus is part of the same family of the SARS virus.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine announced on March 14 that clinical microbiologists Karen Carroll, M.D., and Mostafa have developed an in-house coronavirus screening test that may soon allow the health system to test as many as 1,000 people per day.
“We will be able to diagnose more cases. This will allow the control of exposure,” said Mostafa.
Johns Hopkins used the test, which analyzes a nasal or oral swab, for the first time on March 11, with roughly 85 tests performed in the first three days.
These numbers are expected to ramp up quickly, reaching 180 people per day next week and 500 the week after that, says Mostafa.
There could be 1,000 tests per day by early April, Mostafa says.
The test returns results in about 24 hours, though doctors say they hope to shorten that time to as little as three hours.
