Now, a new test by MIT and colleagues promises to make testing so cheap and effective that people could potentially do it every day. Researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, along with their collaborators at the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Ragon Institute have devised a CRISPR-based diagnostic for COVID-19, called STOPCovid, that can achieve results in 30 minutes to an hour.
“We need rapid testing to become part of the fabric of this situation so that people can test themselves every day, which will slow down outbreak,” said Omar Abudayyeh, an MIT McGovern Fellow working on the diagnostic.
The researchers tested STOPCovid on 402 patient samples (202 positive and 200 negative) and found that the test detected 93% of the positive cases as determined by PCR tests for COVID-19. In addition, the test is made to be simple enough to carry out without the need for any specialized...
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