Sales executive Steve Verschoor is the head of sales for GTSP Global, a leading solar parts manufacturer with clients across Asia. A resident of Boise, Idaho, Steve Verschoor is one of the co-founders of Molecular Testing Labs which was, on May 15, 2020, highlighted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as one of the labs offering convenient and effective home-based kits for post-exposure HIV testing.
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care systems that cater to people who’ve tested positive for HIV/AIDS have had to adapt their mode of operations, shifting to telehealth and phone triage services to minimize contact with their patients. Others, such as those that offer pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), have had to close or reduce working hours. These measures, while necessary, could lead to an increase in HIV infections.
Even in these times, keeping HIV infections down is a public health priority. Timely testing and administration of PrEP are two crucial steps to doing that. CDC issued guidelines for clinics challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic on how they can reallocate resources to continue offering HIV testing and make available PrEP available to patients who have recently been exposed. While indicating that lab-only visits were its preferred method of testing for HIV and providing PrEP, it recommended two other options when lab visits were not possible: home specimen collection kits and self-testing with oral swab tests.
For home specimen collection kits, CDC recommended labs like Molecular Testing Kits which have protocols for sending out sample collection kits to patients by order of a clinician. The patient can receive the kit, collect a blood sample by fingerstick, then send the sample to the lab for testing. The test is covered by a majority of insurance plans and test results, once ready, are communicated to the patient’s clinician. This method is more preferred over oral swab tests because of its higher sensitivity. Clinicians can then put patients who test negative on PrEP.
