In less than 4 minutes, China develops a new device to detect corona infection

Remote students are required to take a nasal swab 72 hours before the exams.

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Chinese scientists have managed to develop a new device that can provide the results of a corona test in less than four minutes, the Chinese "Xinhua" agency said in a report Thursday.

The research team members from Shanghai-based Fudan University said that this portable prototype can quickly and accurately detect traces of genetic material associated with COVID-19.

The device is an electromechanical biosensor consisting of a probe bound to flexible single-stranded DNA linked to a robust self-assembled double-stranded DNA structure.

The team pointed out that the device does not require DNA extraction and amplification procedures, and thus shortens the testing time significantly, in contrast to the QRT-PCR toolkit, or what is known as "quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction."

The researchers used the device to test swab samples from 33 patients with Covid-19, and their infection was confirmed through traditional QRT-PCR tests, 23 samples from patients who tested negative for the QRT-PCR test and suffer from fever, 6 samples from patients with influenza A or B, and 25 A sample of healthy volunteers.

The new device detected the RNA of the Corona virus in all 33 patients within only one to four minutes, and it did not detect this DNA in any of the other 54 people not infected with the virus.

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