Cellgene Medix is applying to grants related to underserved communities and countries such as Africa and conducting research to validate our Good Ag COVID-19 Antigen Test and GG Omicron & Delta COVID-19 PCR while actively surveying the prevalence of Omicron, Omicron stealth, and Deltacron in the community.
Beyond the direct health impacts of the virus, the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on the financial security and mental health and well-being of people of color, low-income people, LGBT people, and other underserved groups as shown in Figure below. Despite being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, as of today, Black and Hispanic people were less likely than White people to have received a COVID-19 test. Addressing disparities in health and health care is important not only from and social justice and equity standpoint, but also for improving the nation’s overall health and economic prosperity.
Development of a cost-efffective PCR variant test that costs as little as or less than the conventional PCR test and can be run in multiple PCR machines (CFX96/ABI7500/Rotorgene Q platform) frequently equipped in small-to medium sized labs around USA may be a solution to partially solve the disparity of covid test and variant test in specific will hopefully be resolved by better quality accurate variant testing. While sequencing technologies may be the gold standard for COVID-19 variant test, its limitations include low throughput and high cost(thousands of dollars charged to patients/insurance problems), making multigene panels laborious and expensive. This is not adequate for medicare/medicaid and makes it unpractical for standard of care for minority populations.
Therefore, we propose that GG COVID-19 Omicron and Delta kit could be a cost-effective was to diagnose COVID-19 variants in the minority population. In addition, we are proposing that labs within and outside of USA collaborate with us in our Cellgenemedix Good Ag Rapid COVID-19 Antigen Test & GG COVID-19 Omicron/Delta PCR study which is conducted in various clinical sites in USA and Korea currently.
For research collaboration and questions, use the contact form below or contact rsearch@cellgenemedix.com. The study protocol and proposal can be found here.