A mobile platform developing a rapid test to detect the Coronavirus

Scientists have developed a mobile platform for smartphones that relies on saliva to conduct a rapid test for the Corona virus, they claim that it can provide results in 15 minutes without resource-intensive laboratory tests, and during this next report we monitor new studies on rapid testing of a virus by portable, according to what was reported by thehealthsite

The new study, published in Science Advances, combines an illuminated microscope reading device with a smartphone to determine the viral load in a patient sample, and experiments with a small number of participants showed that the new test works as effectively as the well-established quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.

The authors of the study wrote: “We believe that this smart phone platform, a similar future application, provides the possibility to rapidly expand the capacity of corona screening, and perhaps simplify the verification of contact tracing, to improve local containment and inform regional disease control efforts.”

Most coronavirus tests currently require swabbing the upper throat behind the nose, an inconvenient process that requires medical professionals to wear full protective equipment for sample collection in airborne infection isolation rooms before performing RT-PCR tests.

The researchers used this design to analyze the saliva of 12 patients with Corona and six health controls, and found that the approach succeeded in distinguishing between patients infected with the virus and those who did not.

In addition, researchers compared nasal swabs and saliva from non-human primates before and after infection, and found higher levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in saliva swabs, which also indicates that saliva may provide a powerful means of diagnosis after infection.