A more affordable method for detecting Covid-19 infection at home?

Researchers have developed a homemade test to detect Covid-19 that is inexpensive and requires the use of your smartphone.

There are currently two ways to check if someone has Covid-19. One is a rapid antigen test, the other is a PCR test. The former can be done at home and is cheaper than a PCR test, but less accurate than a PCR test. Alternatives are starting to emerge. Here is one.

Researchers have developed their own test to detect Covid-19.

What if there was a test that was almost as accurate as PCR, but cheaper? This is what researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have developed. This is a system called “smaRT-LAMP”. The initial cost for this test will be around $100, but once everything is ready, each test will only cost $7. In other words, it will be cheaper in the long run.

Inexpensive and requires the use of your smartphone

And the best part is that the process uses your smartphone’s camera, which means you don’t need anything other than a “smaRT-LAMP”device. The principle is as follows: the user puts their saliva into the test kit and puts it all into a reactive solution that will allow amplification of the viral RNA. The samples are then placed in a cardboard box with an LED lamp attached to the top of the box, and by placing a smartphone camera on top, a dedicated mobile app can identify and analyze the reactions.

The researchers also believe that this kit could be modified in the future to adapt to other strains of Covid or other pathogens. In other words, when the pandemic is behind us, if it ever happens at all, there will still be interest in this system. Currently, the first phase of trials has been carried out on 50 patients. At this stage, it is difficult to say whether all this will work on a large scale, but the first results are encouraging. To be continued!