• Slug: BC-CNS-COVID-19 Innovation,200.
• File photo, long-form audio file available.

By Mitchell Zimmermann
Cronkite News

Arizona in Focus is a podcast from Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS. This season we are focusing on science and technology stories that explore everything from driverless cars to innovating a vaccine during the pandemic.

PHOENIX – The COVID-19 pandemic has created great uncertainty and fear, but it also has sparked innovation in the medical field, including developing tests for the coronavirus that causes the disease. Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute has played a major role in creating a saliva-based test that’s now offered widely around the state.

“We’ve been constantly endeavoring to increase the level of testing we’re doing, make sure that we maintain the rapid turnaround time that we have for the testing because that’s essential for it (a test) to be useful,” Joshua LaBaer, executive director of the Biodesign Institute, told Cronkite News.

Coronavirus tests after Thanksgiving show Arizona is experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 cases, but there is a glimmer of hope with COVID-19 vaccines, LaBaer said. In mid-December, distribution of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine began in Arizona with health care workers, educators and those most vulnerable to the illness receiving the vaccine. It’s a process LaBaer said will take months.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

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The first COVID-19 vaccine approvals came this month, and Arizona health officials said began vaccinating priority groups, like heath care workers, as soon as they arrived. The speed with which the vaccines were approved was just one example of how the COVID-19 pandemic has driven health and scientific innovation. (Photo by NIAID/Creative Commons)