--- title: COVID-19 Testing Should Be At the Heart of Our 2022 Plan description: Vaccines are key, but heading into year three of the pandemic, testing will be just as important to stay ahead of COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-01-04T17:05:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:17:59.497Z article:section: Health og:title: Why 2022 Should Be the Year of COVID-19 Testing og:description: Vaccines are key, but heading into year three of the pandemic, testing will be just as important to stay ahead of COVID-19. og:url: https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73802998fe7b15de/698a211a8fd2ee72913635d2/GettyImages-1237372995.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: In this photo illustration, the Abbott's at-home covid-19 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why 2022 Should Be the Year of COVID-19 Testing twitter:description: Vaccines are key, but heading into year three of the pandemic, testing will be just as important to stay ahead of COVID-19. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73802998fe7b15de/698a211a8fd2ee72913635d2/GettyImages-1237372995.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # In 2022, We Need to Shift Our COVID-19 Focus to Testing > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=2c0207ea-f0b3-456b-94fe-4d7517029ef5&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine [Watch (HLS stream): The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8) (5:16)  _Published 2021-12-13. For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jan 4, 2022 5:05 PM UTC For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jan 4, 2022 5:05 PM UTC If 2021 was the year of the vaccine, 2022 should be the year of testing. COVID-19 vaccines are essential for controlling the pandemic, but since getting a shot to everyone on the planet is time-consuming and stymied by [unequal global distribution](https://time.com/6124974/omicron-africa-vaccines/); because [many who do have access to vaccines refuse to take them](https://time.com/5922176/vaccine-hesitancy-us/); and because the [vaccines aren’t 100% able to prevent infections](https://time.com/5945177/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness/), the world is going to need more in order to stay ahead of SARS-CoV-2. That extra something should be [widespread testing](https://time.com/6050846/covid-19-rapid-testing/)—not just the kind that labs administer to confirm a case of COVID-19, but also the [at-home, rapid tests](https://time.com/6096528/operation-warp-speed-covid-19-testing/) that people can perform themselves. How easily people can learn their COVID-19 status will determine how well the world can control COVID-19\. The more people who know if they are positive, the better they can practice mitigation measures like self-isolating and [wearing masks](https://time.com/5950829/vaccines-covid-19-infection-real-world-study/) so they don’t spread the virus to other people—especially since many infections don’t cause symptoms at all, so people won’t know if they are positive unless they test. Just before the new year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)[ authorized](https://www.fda.gov/media/155173/download) the latest at-home rapid antigen test, from Siemens, which—like the other 12 such authorized tests—can be useful either by people who have symptoms and suspect they’ve been infected with SARS-CoV-2, or by those that don’t have symptoms but want to be sure they aren’t infected before or after attending a gathering with others. U.S. health officials have increasingly stressed the importance of self testing in recent weeks, as more people boarded planes, trains and buses to gather for the holidays. Conducting a self-test, which provides results in about 15 to 20 minutes, is a good way to reduce your chances of spreading the virus to anyone else. Testing as a practice, however, isn’t as robust in the U.S. as it should be. Since the first days of the pandemic, when Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labs were the only ones performing tests to verify SARS-CoV-2 cases, the U.S. has[ lagged behind](https://time.com/5793605/coronavirus-testing-united-states/) in making tests for COVID-19 both available and affordable, for many reasons, a number of them scientific, others regulatory and some even cultural. The CDC initially didn’t allow academic or commercial labs to perform SARS-CoV-2 tests because the agency wanted to ensure that a standard, scientifically validated assay was used to verify all COVID-19 cases and provide an accurate picture of how much virus was in the country, and where it was circulating. The first test kits the CDC sent to state health departments, however, were unfortunately [compromised](https://time.com/5801790/coronavirus-testing-us/) by a lab contaminant and fixing the problem slowed down U.S. testing capacity in early 2020\. Even after the FDA began authorizing commercial labs to perform COVID-19 tests in spring 2020, the country was still playing catch up. The U.S. response then shifted to vaccines—devoting considerable resources, personnel, energy and attention to developing and then distributing the shots. Meanwhile, the public also began to believe that once vaccines were available, they wouldn’t need to get tested as much. That was an intuitive response, but the reality is that SARS-CoV-2 can infect people without causing any symptoms, and t[hose infected—whether symptomatic or not—can still spread the virus](https://time.com/5848949/covid-19-asymptomatic-spread/) to others. The virus also started to mutate, which meant that while vaccines continued to protect people, that immunity waned in the face of new versions of the virus. So even with vaccines, it remained important for people to know if they were infected or not. But testing remains out of reach for many Americans. While the National Health Service in the U.K. makes test kits available without charge, sending packs of kits directly to people’s homes, in the U.S., Americans have to purchase them for about $20 to $40 online or at pharmacies. In December, President Joe Biden announced that [private insurers, who cover about 150 million Americans, must reimburse people who purchase self-tests](https://time.com/6125570/joe-biden-free-covid-19-tests-at-home/); until then many insurers only covered the costs if the self tests were ordered by a medical professional, or if they had symptoms. Such requirements defeat the purpose of using the at-home tests as a way for people to self-police for COVID-19, and isolate themselves or avoid public settings if they are positive. It didn’t help that health experts were also sending mixed messages about the importance and reliability of testing to the public. The gold standard test for SARS-CoV-2, known as a [PCR, or molecular test](https://time.com/5880255/covid-19-tests-types/), looks for genetic traces of the virus. Doctors rely on PCR tests to confirm a COVID-19 diagnosis. The [at-home tests are known as rapid antigen tests](https://time.com/6104551/at-home-covid-19-tests/), and can provide results in about 15 to 20 minutes. They look for proteins shed by the virus in infected people, and most are more than 90% reliable for identifying a virus infection. These rapid tests are also generally able to detect any variant of SARS-CoV-2, [including the latest Omicron variant](https://time.com/6124678/covid-tests-detect-omicron/), although the FDA[ warned](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/sars-cov-2-viral-mutations-impact-covid-19-tests) in a statement on Dec. 28 that the rapid tests may not be as sensitivity to Omicron as they are to earlier variants of the virus. However, some doctors have noted that they’re not as accurate as PCR tests since the PCR tests can take a small amount of virus and amplify it to ensure any SARS-CoV-2 isn’t missed. Still, for surveillance purposes, these self tests can be quite effective. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and encouraging people to test themselves more frequently before or after potentially high-risk behaviors like boarding a plane or attending an indoor public event, could help people avoid spreading the virus to others by self-isolating until they test negative. That’s why in recent weeks health officials are drawing more attention to testing. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has been promoting the agency’s [Test to Stay program for schools](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1217-Test-To-Stay.html), which encourages students of all ages to get tested frequently. Many parents, however, have struggled to purchase the kits at their local pharmacies, which haven’t been able to keep enough tests in stock to meet demand. Anticipating continued pressure for more tests, [Biden announced a plan to purchase 500 million at-home kit](https://time.com/6130884/biden-home-tests-omicron/)s that would be distributed free to Americans. The federal government is planning on standing up a website to take requests for shipping the kits directly to people’s homes, but as of Dec. 29, the[ site has yet to go live](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/12/29/press-briefing-by-white-house-covid-19-response-team-and-public-health-officials-76/). With Omicron continuing to spread quickly, and political leaders reluctant to resort to lockdowns again, testing, especially home-testing, will be essential to containing the pandemic. That’s the only way Americans will be able to take the proper precautions to prevent spreading the virus, and potentially causing further surges in cases in the coming year. The sooner infected people, whether they are symptomatic or not, isolate themselves so the virus can’t spread to other people, the sooner the pandemic will peter out. ## Transcript [00:00] I think vaccines are misunderstood, and maybe it's because it seems like magic. [00:07] That simplicity and the mystery of it is something that ends up creating a lot of skepticism. [00:14] People are fooled by the speed. [00:17] Everything that we knew when it was time to design a vaccine for COVID-19, [00:22] we knew for so long, but the public had just become aware of it. [00:26] If this would happen two years ago, we would not be ready. [00:29] Saying that it happened overnight, it took two, three decades, at least. [00:34] 2021 was the year when so many praised the miracle of vaccine development. [00:40] In science, there is hardly ever a simple, quick fix. [00:44] But this was truly a moment of the right fix - [00:47] a brand new kind of vaccine technology - [00:50] at exactly the right time. [00:53] I started out in math, and I moved to biology. [00:56] And after medical school, I saw one of the first cases of HIV in Tennessee back in 1982. [01:03] And so the first part of my career was trying to understand [01:06] the immunology of vaccine-enhanced disease and trying to make vaccines safer. [01:12] I got interested in science when I was 16 years old. [01:16] I was hooked on the idea that you could go to work [01:20] and discover something that no one else in the world knows on any given day. [01:25] It seems at 16, I thought that maybe I will be a scientist. [01:30] I was always working with mRNA, I mean for 30 years at least. [01:35] And I never wanted to develop a vaccine. I wanted to develop it for therapy. [01:40] When I first came to Penn from the NIH, [01:44] pure luck hit where I met Kati Karikó over a Xerox machine. [01:49] And she told me she worked on RNA, and she could help us with our vaccine. [01:57] Every experiment doesn't work, every hypothesis isn't good. [02:01] It was a continuous flow of negative feedback. [02:05] But we saw the potential of the RNA and neither of us would give up. [02:11] Although mRNA can teach our cells to fight infection, it took doctors Karikó and Weissman [02:17] 16 years to figure out how to use it safely in a vaccine. [02:22] First when I made this RNA, actually I did not tell Drew Weissman, my colleague, [02:27] because I thought that maybe I mixed up something. [02:29] So I repeated the experiment and we could see that there was no inflammation in human cells. [02:35] We're both scientists. We're not baseball players who cheer when we hit a homerun. [02:41] We knew that it had great potential. [02:43] But what we thought about is what are we going to do with it? [02:47] Meanwhile, doctors Corbett and Graham spent years unlocking the structural secrets of viruses. [02:54] One of the really important problems in coronaviruses that had not been solved is really simple. [03:01] What does the coronavirus really look like to the immune system? [03:06] And to figure that out, you have to be able to take a really high definition picture [03:13] of the proteins that are on the surface of the coronavirus. [03:16] And then do some protein engineering to stabilize the structure. [03:21] At that moment, you realize that you have almost what is a universal strategy for creating a vaccine for coronaviruses. [03:32] A mysterious respiratory illness with similarities to SARS has healthcare workers around the world on alert. [03:40] What we said to each other, all's we need is a sequence and we're ready to go. [03:44] We can make a vaccine in weeks and get it into people very quickly. [03:52] The fact that we made a vaccine in 10 months, [03:56] and has the potential to end this pandemic, will certainly stand out. [04:01] "Do it mama!" (laughter) [04:04] Most scientists never get to see a product actually used. [04:09] And to watch the evening news and see the relief on healthcare providers getting immunized, [04:14] those were special moments. [04:16] I also get emotional when I got a letter from an elderly home, [04:22] and they reported that they received the vaccine. [04:26] There were like 200 elderly in that home. [04:30] And nobody died. [04:34] On social media, when children were going back to visiting their grandparents again. [04:40] Seeing people reunited in that way, it was a very surreal moment. [04:48] A surreal moment, and definitely worth celebrating, if only briefly before a return to work. [04:55] These scientists are now trying to apply their game-changing discoveries to other diseases. [05:01] Influenza, even cancer. [05:04] A brand new way to make a healthier, more equitable world. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/"},"headline":"In 2022, We Need to Shift Our COVID-19 Focus to Testing","datePublished":"2022-01-04T17:05:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:17:59.497Z","description":"Vaccines are key, but heading into year 3 of the pandemic, testing will be just as important to stay ahead of the virus","url":"https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/","keywords":["COVID-19","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73802998fe7b15de/698a211a8fd2ee72913635d2/GettyImages-1237372995.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73802998fe7b15de/698a211a8fd2ee72913635d2/GettyImages-1237372995.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"In this photo illustration, the Abbott's at-home covid-19","caption":"In this photo illustration, the Abbott's at-home covid-19","creditText":"SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett—© 2021 SOPA Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6132183/2022-covid-19-testing-plan/","name":"In 2022, We Need to Shift Our COVID-19 Focus to Testing"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine","description":"For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. 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