Downloading a few COVID home tests from USPS has been helpful, but what if you can check them out whenever you want, using your phone’s camera? Educational scientists have developed a test method that requires only a cheap laboratory equipment and your smartphone, and preliminary results suggest that it is as accurate as PCR testing.
The program, developed by the University of California, scientists of Santa Barbara and described in a new paper published in the JAMA Network Open magazine, requires less than $ 100 for standard equipment such as a hot plate, according to Gizmodo. After that, each test costs only $ 7, making it ideal for remote communities or individuals struggling to prevent PCR testing.
The easiest way: Download the free software developed by scientists, Bacticount, and bend your phone over the hot plate with the rear camera facing down. You’ll put your saliva test kit on a hot plate, throw in an effective solution that will make the viral RNA more visible on your phone’s camera, and launch the app. The solution will be based on viral factors (both COVID and flu tested in the study) and then bright red, and the app will measure the amount of virus in the saliva based on how fast the color reaction occurs.
The system is called Smart-lamp, a smartphone “loop-mediated isothermal amplification,” which is a heat and solution method used by UCSB scientists. It is very cheap and seems to be easy to set up, which fits the project goal to meet the need “in low-income and middle-income countries for low-cost, low-cost, yet highly reliable and low-cost SARS-CoV. -2 viruses that are strong against rotating species.”
But this approach still needs more testing, as this initial study contained a very small sample of 50 patients with symptoms and no symptoms in one area in Southern California. In other words: Do not expect to be able to order Bacticount compatible kits and check your own soon, especially since the app is limited to working with cameras on Samsung Galaxy S9 phones.
However, the system is promising, and we have reached out to UCSB researchers about how quickly it can be approved for public use. If accurate as the first test suggests, knowing its affordability and rating could be a great help to the international testing capability as the demand for COVID testing continues to rise in 2022.