A team of California-based researchers have developed a test that can detect the coronavirus in five minutes using gene-editing technology and a modified mobile phone camera, a discovery that could solve the issue of under-testing in epidemic-stricken countries.
Led by University of California, Berkeley’s Dr Jennifer Doudna, who is the joint winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry, the test’s successful development was announced in a research paper published on September 30. The paper is still in preprint, meaning it has not been peer-reviewed.
As Covid-19 cases continue to shoot up in some of the world’s largest countries like the US, India and Brazil, huge backlogs of tests have strained public health systems. Most Covid-19 tests currently take at least 24 hours, but sometimes backlogs can lead to delays spanning several days.
#CovidTesting that can detect pathogen in 5 minutes developed by Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna
California-based researchers develop a test that can detect the coronavirus using gene-editing technology and a modified mobile phone camera. #COVID__19https://t.co/449B5lOsOS
— Ketan (@ketan72) October 10, 2020