PharmaCyte Biotech’s COVID-19 Test Offers “Pool Testing” Dr. Fauci and White House Coronavirus Task Force Now Considering

NEW YORK, NY, June 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PharmaCyte Biotech (OTCQB: PMCB) may have what the White House Coronavirus Task Force is looking for just as COVID-19 cases are surging across the country.  Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the White House Coronavirus Task Force is now considering sample pooling, also known as pool testing, as a way to ramp up local authorities’ ability to determine the extent of the infection in their areas. 

“It’s not going well. I have to tell you, it’s not going well,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview with CNBC.  “What we need to do is we need to rethink, and we are right now, the idea of many more tests getting into the community and even pooling tests.”

Pool testing involves combining or pooling samples from multiple people and testing them together in a single batch.  It’s a way to efficiently increase the volume of tests to quickly churn through what is expected to be mostly negative samples.

PharmaCyte’s COVID-19 testing kits have exactly that capability.  The company licensed its COVID-19 test from Hai Kang Life Corporation in Hong Kong and is currently awaiting Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  One of the key selling points for PharmaCyte’s testing kits is that they are ideally suited for the mass testing that Dr. Fauci is convinced will make a difference. 

Dr. Deborah Birx, who along with Dr. Fauci play a lead role on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said, “Pooling would give us the capacity to go from half a million tests a day to potentially 5 million individuals tested per day.”

In addition to combating the recent surge in coronavirus cases, PharmaCyte’s COVID-19 test could be the perfect option to ensure a safer reopening of the entire country with a mass-testing solution in place that all companies, organizations, schools, and universities could embrace with confidence.   

It was in April of this year that a report titled, “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience,” was released by a blue-ribbon panel of thought leaders across the political spectrum which included economists, social scientists, lawyers and ethicists, and according to that report, there's a growing consensus that points to one key move necessary to put Americans back to work—dramatically upscaling testing.