While the world waits and more with Social Distancing, travel restrictions, and mouth protection of lives, says the American geneticist George Church, that we could make Corona even without a vaccine, we kill: “We have now the tools in Hand to end the pandemic.” It is possible to eliminate the spread of the Coronavirus in a short time and at comparatively low cost, and to return to our life before the crisis, says the world recognized genome researchers and molecular biologist at the DLD-Sync, the virtual offer of the digital conference DLD. The key to this: nationwide Tests, and an ultra-modern and mass sequencing of human DNA.
Coronavirus lives of new infections
Church’s idea is based on the fact that the Coronavirus survives only because there continue to be new infections. Would, without exception, identified all of the Diseased and quarantined, would the extinction of the Virus quickly. “Especially against the Background that the development of a vaccine take a long time or even impossible to find out, you must operate this strategy. You can say, according to the construction of the corresponding infrastructure, so in a few months, the Coronavirus is from the regional, national, continental, and eventually worldwide to eradicate,“ Church. FOCUS Online / Shuang Liu
The crux of this approach is a Problem, which has accompanied us since the outbreak of the pandemic: The global capacity for testing on Covid-19 are too low. Again and again, virologists have pointed out in the past few months on the importance of a high test density, the spread of the Virus to contain. Also, Germany has increased its testing capacity massively. But to really get all of the Infected also those that have only mild or no symptoms – finding, would have millions, even billions of people to be tested – to catch a utopian below.
technique from revolutionary Gen-project to all of the Infected are visible
But that is precisely the intention Church. Technological developments brought about by the human genome project 20 years ago, on the way to the Church was involved to help. The objective of this groundbreaking science project was to sequence the human genome (genetic material) (breaking the nucleotide sequence in a DNA molecule determine) and to decrypt it. “We can use this tremendous sequencing capacity to identify all Infected in a country, continent or the world, and to quarantine,” says the scientist.
World’s sequencing machines are available, with which, already, the genes, for example, of Tumor-patients investigated. In the same way one could prove that the RNA (ribonucleic acid) of the Coronavirus in a cost-effective, quickly and without conventional Covid-19-Test.
Every German is a need for a self –
test “In principle, the idea is quite simple,” explains The German research colleague, the geneticist, Hans Lehrach, in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung. “We will send each of the people in Germany, for example, five sample tube. Every week to open one, and transferred a certain amount of saliva and sends it to a Central collection point.“ In regional analysis centers, these people, in the samples taken could be then and sequenced processes. From the result, the scientists are able to read out who has the Virus and who is not. The result of this “Testing of all at a blow”: “The Virus should disappear within a few weeks,” says Lehrach.
The scientists believe that the sequencing devices in a analysis centre in the shortest possible time, millions of samples are simultaneously analyzed. In addition, the cost of doing so would be, according to the estimates of experts, only a few euros per Test – “a minimal amount in view of the enormous economic loss that has already accumulated as a result of the need for social distancing attached”, such as Church and Lehrach write in a joint article in the FAZ.
the logistics for mass tests could be constructed quickly
The scientists are optimistic that the logistics of such a national or global mass tests could be set up quickly. “A lot of the strategy elements necessary technology, capacity, experience and willingness are already in place,” write Church and Lehrach. The mass production and the distribution of the test kits could be organized with help from the government. In addition, there is a need for the willingness of the citizens to the test procedure to participate in, say, the geneticist and ask: “In view of the urgency, we should be collectively able, within a few months, a powerful infrastructure for population-wide testing, and to make the necessary funds available.”
The next DLD Sync with the Italian architect and engineer Carlo Ratti will be held on 3. June at 18.30 instead. You can find more information here.
In the FOCUS Online/Wochit In the
