In a speech in October, he called for a “faster, cheaper screening test, that you can take right at home or in school,” and his transition team’s coronavirus plan includes a call to “invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.”.

Anthony FauciAnthony FauciFauci says Santa Claus won't be spreading coronavirus due to 'innate immunity' Bill Gates: 'I feel very confident' COVID-19 vaccine is safe Fauci gets frustrated: 'Get rid of these ridiculous conspiracy theories' MORE, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, made a nod to such rapid at-home tests while speaking to a New York Times summit Tuesday. 

“What we really need now and we hopefully will get, but we don't have it yet, is point of care testing that people can essentially do at home, like a pregnancy test, because the spread is community spread from people without symptoms,” Fauci said. 

Some experts raise concerns that the rapid tests are not as accurate as the standard tests currently being relied on, and that people could get a false negative from a rapid test and then go out and infect others

Another concern is that if people are taking tests at home, they will not be reporting their results to public health authorities, and the country will lose out on data on where the virus is spreading. 

Backers of the rapid tests say the FDA is taking too narrow of a view, and that when rapid tests are used frequently on a wide scale they will help catch many more cases than a smaller number of somewhat more-accurate tests would

Backers also say the rapid tests are accurate in catching positive cases when it matters most, when people are most infectious and at risk of spreading the virus to others.   

Mina said the government needs to take a far more active role in providing funding to ramp up manufacturing of rapid tests, rather than relying on small startup companies to do the work themselves

Rahul Dhanda, CEO of Sherlock Biosciences, another company working on a rapid test, said his company could ramp up faster with government funding.