Coronavirus Could Soon Be Detected Using a Smartphone

The COVID-19 virus has taken over the world and caused a global lockdown. The hardest role about Coronavirus is that it is difficult to detect as it doesn't show any symptom in patients until two weeks from them being infected, and patients can nonetheless spread the virus amid people they come up in contact with. However, researchers are working on a device that could soon make it possible to discover a COVID-19 patient using a smartphone.

Information technology is being reported that COVID-19 detection could soon get quite easy. As piece of cake equally cough or sneezing into a smartphone. A The states-based research team is said to be developing a new sensor that could be attached to a smartphone and tell if a user is infected with COVID-19 within 60 seconds.

The sensor could potentially cost as low as £45, and it will be available within three months. Professor Massood Tabib-Azar, an engineer at the Academy of Utah in the US, is the Projection Leader for the development of the upcoming sensor. He said that the project was started twelve months agone and was originally designed to find the mortiferous Zika virus, but has been modified to detect Coronavirus.

The prototype sensor is simply i-inch-wide and communicates with a smartphone via Bluetooth or the charging port. If someone blows, coughs, or sneezes into the sensor, it would be able to notify via an app if they are infected with the COVID-19 virus. If the virus is nowadays, Dna strands in the sensor are jump to its poly peptide, and it triggers an electrical resistance, signaling a positive upshot.

Professor Massood Tabib-Azar said that the sensor could display a color to bespeak the presence of COVID-19 then that the effect can exist viewed with a naked heart. He besides said that the sensor is reusable as it destroys the previous saliva sample using a modest accuse of electric current. He said that such a sensor could be placed in everyone'south paw if it is manufactured at scale.

The team said that they are also working on a way to ship the results to authorized health agencies. This will get in easier for governments effectually the earth to accurately indicated COVID-19 hotspots, which can so be used to more effectively contain the virus from spreading further. The app is expected to be set up for a iv-week clinical trial by the end of July 2022.

Our Take

If this sensor turns out to be a success in its clinical trial, all the countries around the world would be interested in it. This solution to discover the infection is much easier and non-invasive than the electric current method that involves collecting a sample of saliva or mucous from the back of the nose.

Once this sensor and the companion app is tied with the COVID-19 contact tracing APIs from Apple and Google, and link it to authorized health agencies around the earth, it could become much easier to contain and defeat COVID-19.

[Source: Metro]