Without any at-home COVID-19 testing, 11.6 million infections and 119,000 related deaths would occur or a 60-day period, with $10.1 billion in overall costs (inpatient and lost-productivity costs combined). That’s according to a modeling study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers went on to show that with nationwide, weekly home testing and isolation for those who test positive, new infections could drop to 8.8 million and deaths to 103,000. The study concludes that overall, weekly testing would result in a cost per infection avoided of $7890 and a cost per death avoided of $1.43 million.
The researchers emphasize that widespread testing is important. Even with the vaccine rollout, researchers emphasize the need for widespread testing, due to “limited vaccine supply, vaccine hesitancy and refusal, and the emergence of variants.”
