Experts seek 'technical breakthrough' amid scramble for rapid coronavirus tests by the fall

As the fall flu season approaches, experts are hard at work on rapid at-home coronavirus tests hoping to have them made widely available in the United States, seeking a "technical breakthrough."

There's an ongoing scramble for "next-stage technologies" that could ultimately lead to widespread COVID-19 tests quickly providing results at home, The Wall Street Journal reports, and many developers are in on the effort.

Among them are teams looking to use gene-editing technology, while OraSure Technologies says it's hoping to submit an at-home test to the FDA this September. There's also a Shark Tank-esque competition underway launched by the National Institutes of Health seeking to accelerate development of COVID-19 testing technologies, laying out an ambitious goal of making "millions of accurate and easy-to-use tests per week available to all Americans by the end of summer 2020," and according to the Journal, more than 280 groups have applied.

But it's still an "open question" whether millions of rapid tests can be produced per week by the fall, the Journal notes. Mammoth Biosciences advisory board member Charles Y. Chiu told the Journal that "I don't want to underestimate the magnitude of the challenge," while Quest Diagnostics' Gary Samuels said that in terms of testing, it's "hard to imagine getting to the numbers that people are talking about without some sort of technical breakthrough, and that's what everyone's searching for."