Microlab detects COVID-19 in 30 minutes
Researchers in the US have developed an automated microlab device that identifies the presence of the novel coronavirus in half an hour.
The breakthrough by a team at Stanford University in California leverages lab-on-a-chip technology and CRISPR, a genetic editing technique.
MORE ON THE ENGINEERING RESPONSE TO COVID-19 HERE
"The microlab is a microfluidic chip just half the size of a credit card containing a complex network of channels smaller than the width of a human hair," said the study's senior author, Juan G Santiago, the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford and an expert in microfluidics.
The new COVID-19 test is detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our test can identify an active infection relatively quickly and cheaply. It's also not reliant on antibodies like many tests, which only indicates if someone has had the disease, and not whether they are currently infected and therefore contagious," said Ashwin Ramachandran, a Stanford graduate student and the study's first author.
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