Home 5 Articles 5 New Low-Cost Sensor Offers Promising Test for Rapid, At Home COVID-19 Testing

New Low-Cost Sensor Offers Promising Test for Rapid, At Home COVID-19 Testing

by | Nov 2, 2020 | Articles, Clinical Diagnostics Insider, Diagnostic Testing and Emerging Technologies, Emerging Tests-dtet, Point of Care-dtet

Laboratory companies and scientists are working furiously to produce the rapid, point of care testing technology needed to prevent asymptomatic people from spreading SARS-CoV-2. And in a promising new development, researchers from the California Institute for Technology (Caltech) have developed a new type of test that combines multiple kinds of data with a low-cost sensor that could enable rapid in-home diagnosis of a COVID infection in less than 10 minutes. In addition, the multiplexed test uses small volumes of saliva or blood and can be utilized without the involvement of a health care professional. The Diagnostic Challenge To contain the spread of COVID-19, it is vital to ensure that people with SARS-CoV-2 stay home. The problem is that those who are infected are often asymptomatic and have no idea that they are exposing others to the virus. While asymptomatic people can always get tested, scarce testing resources are needed to diagnose patients who do exhibit symptoms. Moreover, current COVID-testing technologies generally take hours or days to produce results and require the use of expensive, complex equipment. Truly effective screening of the asymptomatic would require tests capable of rapidly and accurately identifying infections that people could easily self-administer, like a scanning […]

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