Coronavirus: Singapore launches new fast-track swab test kits for inbound travellers

Researchers say the domestically developed kits are more than 99 per cent accurate and take less than half the time of tests currently used in hospitals

The city state has also announced changes to the law that will introduce mandatory cleaning standard for ‘high contact areas’

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A laboratory technician extracts viruses from swab samples so that the genetic structure can be analysed. Photo: DPA

Published: 1:58pm, 6 Mar 2020Updated: 11:31pm, 6 Mar 2020

Singapore has begun using a new swab test that could determine within hours if a person has been infected with coronavirus, as the city state ramps up measures to tackle the outbreak.

Visitors entering the Lion City who have a fever or respiratory symptoms, but are not defined as being a “clinical suspect case”, have had to undergo the test since Thursday.

Suspect cases include people suffering from pneumonia or severe respiratory infections who have had recent travel history to Iran, northern Italy, Japan and South Korea – all of which have experienced major outbreaks of the virus that causes a pneumonia-like illness known as Covid-19 in recent weeks.

“The Covid-19 swab test kit deployed at checkpoints allows us to … extend testing to lower-risk, symptomatic travellers,” the health ministry said in a statement earlier this week. “The added precautions we are taking will help to reduce the risk of imported cases in Singapore.”

A laboratory technician from Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency pictured with part of the new test kits on Thursday. Photo: Bloomberg

Doctors worldwide have been scrambling to design tests that can offer an early diagnosis of the coronavirus, as hundreds of new cases continue to emerge outside China. Research teams in Hong Kong and Macau have come up with solutions that they say take about 30 to 40 minutes to detect the virus.

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Coronavirus: Singapore launches new fast-track swab test kits for inbound travellers

Researchers say the domestically developed kits are more than 99 per cent accurate and take less than half the time of tests currently used in hospitals The city state has also announced changes to the law that will introduce mandatory cleaning standard for ‘high contact areas’

Researchers say the domestically developed kits are more than 99 per cent accurate and take less than half the time of tests currently used in hospitals

The city state has also announced changes to the law that will introduce mandatory cleaning standard for ‘high contact areas’