Coronavirus: how we’re creating a rapid test that could help halt the pandemic

Testing has become central to the discussion about how to best tackle the current coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization is recommending frequent and broad testing in order to identify exactly who has and hasn’t caught the virus and stop its spread by isolating the infected.

But the currently available tests don’t provide the kind of rapid result that is needed to isolate people before they can pass on the virus. This is especially true for healthcare staff and other people who need to keep working outside their homes but could be unwittingly transmitting the disease because they don’t realise they have it.

My colleagues and I are one of several groups of researchers around the world working to develop a rapid test for the virus that could solve this problem. Our goal is to produce a cheap, near-instant test kit that anyone can use, and we hope to have one ready later this year.

The current test method relies on looking for genetic evidence of the virus using the so-called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. This method is very sensitive and can diagnose infected patients even in the early phase of the disease.

But it typically takes at least three hours, including handling at the hospital, to produce a result. If a nurse or doctor is waiting three hours to find out if they are infected, that’s valuable time they could be using to treat patients – or time they may be infecting others. The workload and cost involved also mean the test can’t easily be used to carry out mass screening of the rest of the population.

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Πηγή: theconversation.com