Coronavirus tests could be done faster using Chinese researchers’ new technique, US university says
- There is significant room to speed up coronavirus testing, Virginia Tech says after Chinese-led work on biosensing
- Method allows sample droplets to be ready for testing within minutes, whereas that takes hours during swab testing
The new approach – developed by researchers at Virginia Tech and known as biosensing – could allow test results to be obtained within minutes of taking samples, the university claimed, as health officials and scientists continue to seek fast and accurate detection of the disease.
The mainstream tests used so far to detect Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, are either nucleic acid swab tests, which detect fragments of virus genes, or antibody tests showing whether a person has been infected.
But swab testing, the prevailing method, often takes more than a day because of the laboratory procedures needed to amplify the presence of genetic materials for detection. Early this month, China asked its medical institutions to cut the turnaround time to within six hours for fever clinic patients, and within 24 hours for people taking a test voluntarily.
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There are also commercially available home test kits that look for traces of proteins associated with the coronavirus, or antigen tests, which could deliver cheap and fast results but with varying accuracy.
The Virginia Tech researchers did not mention the prospective application of the new technique in their original paper. But in a subsequent press release, Virginia Tech discussed its potential significance for coronavirus testing, adding that the researchers were seeking funding from the US National Institutes for Health to deliver the method for wider use.