Monkeypox can’t use the same at-home testing playbook as COVID-19

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

After two years of COVID-19, the conversation around monkeypox testing gives off an unnerving sense of deja-vu. The similarities are right there: painful swabs, the struggle to even find a test, bottlenecks, and a long wait for results. But the diseases are different enough that experience with COVID-19 didn't give researchers much of a leg up in their efforts to improve the monkeypox testing process.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts bemoaned the lack of investment in rapid, at-home testing for various diseases in the United States. The thought was that if the infrastructure had been in place before the coronavirus emerged, it would have been easier to scale up testing - and maybe help control the pandemic....

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