A New Coronavirus Mass Testing Technique Has Been Developed
Mass testing has been a major hurdle for getting back into schools and regular indoor activities. Testing that is quick and accurate is necessary to be able to return to larger gatherings. One group of researchers have developed a new way to test many swabs at once that is more sensitive than antigen tests.
In a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers introduce a new test, called LAMP-Seq. It can detect about 100 times lower amounts of virus than current rapid antigen tests, says Jonathan Schmid-Burgk from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology of the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) in a press release. It is almost as sensitive and specific as the common qPCR test, he continues.
The test works by the LAMP method, which stands for Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification. In this process, each sample is tagged with a molecular barcode. Then the researchers make copies of the viral genome at a constant temperature and then sequence them in machines. In this way, the samples can be analyzed in a high volume.
