It’s not 15 mins from the time you get swabbed. It’s 15 once it’s prepared and put in the machine. Then there will be cleanup time after. Either way, even if you could run them through assembly line style every 15 minutes, 1 machine would take a whole 24 hours to process 100 people.
Another commenter @nkrumm pointed out multiple good use cases. I think they will be used to allow health care workers to make rapid decisions, for specific patients, likely in emergency situations. Not to process large volumes.
That's excellent compared to inability to leave an area, or forced two weeks quarantine upon arrival, isn't?
That’s a pretty long customs line.
To add to that, at a accuracy rate of 99% there will be about 75 people who will go through with the wrong diagnosis unless retests are done, which will add extra time. I really don’t see this working out at that scale.
You’d really need a sub 60 second test for this to scale.
Better than nothing, but I wouldn't get too excited yet.
These are for on the spot, emergency or very urgent, situations where particular patients care decisions will be determined by a rapid result.
Flights are getting cancelled already, and some countries closed their airports at all. There are places where you can get stuck at a border crossing, or a roadblock if you have no proof of a recent medical checks. On this background any tests which add 15 min, or even 1 hr overhead sounds more like a solution, not a problem.