LONDON – European scale-up of an artificial intelligence tool for stratifying and personalizing treatment of COVID-19 patients according to the type of complications they are likely to experience will get underway in September, following initial validation. The tool, developed by researchers at the Hospital Clinic Barcelona, Spain, was ‘trained’ on more than a trillion anonymized data points retrieved from the clinic’s electronic health records system.

The U.S. FDA has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to Lumiradx UK Ltd. for its point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 antigen test, which aims to speed the diagnosis of people suspected of having the virus that causes COVID-19. The test detects antigen nucleocapsid protein from a nasal swab taken from symptomatic patients and delivers results in less than 12 minutes.

Avoiding the political overtones that seem to be more viral than COVID-19 these days, Anand Shah, deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs at the FDA, stressed that even though the agency is making decisions in real time in response to the urgency of the pandemic in the U.S., its decisions are being driven by scientific integrity, regulatory independence and the FDA’s historic commitment to ensuring the safety and efficacy of the products it regulates.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. released updated software and new instructions for its Taqpath COVID-19 Combo Kit, a widely used COVID-19 test kit that is also the basis for several other coronavirus diagnostics, following issuance of a letter to clinical laboratory staff and health care providers by the U.S. FDA about the risk of false results with the test. Separately, the Waltham, Mass.-based company has released the first in a series of hematology-oncology assays designed to run on its Ion Torrent Genexus system.

With an eye toward launching its first product, Mobilion Systems Inc. has revealed a $35 million series B funding round led by Amoon. Todd Sone, partner at Amoon who also is joining the company’s board, highlighted the duo’s common vision to develop technologies that offer high resolution and speed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a considerable amount of testing innovation, including more extensive use of saliva as a medium for detection of pathogens. The U.S. FDA has announced an emergency use authorization (EUA) to Yale School of Public Health for the Salivadirect testing protocol that requires no extraction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s RNA, a feature that Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said is “yet another testing innovation game changer that will reduce demand for scarce testing resources.”

LONDON – A large scale population study has shown that home self-testing with low-cost lateral flow diagnostics is a valid way of tracking the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 105,651 people across the U.K. tested themselves for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies with a fingerprick blood test as part of the REACT (REaltime Assessment of Community Transmission) study.

In a controversial move, the American Cancer Society (ACS) recently recommended that people with a cervix should have a primary human papillomavirus (HPV) test every five years starting from age 25 to 65 to screen for cervical cancer. The recommendations displace the Papanicolaou (Pap) test that has formed the backbone of cancer screening for decades and extend the time between tests by two years.