Experts said that one way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is to rapidly screen people in large gatherings like weddings and conferences. Population-wide surveillance should be rapid and accurate to minimize community transmissions. Now, researchers introduced a breathalyzer that can detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in just five minutes.
The team has developed a prototype of the breathalyzer that passed the sensitivity and accuracy tests in diagnosing COVID-19, even in asymptomatic patients. Detection of breath volatile organic compounds presents a promising option for COVID-19 surveillance that is currently limited due to its inflexible and bulky analysis protocol.
A TransHorizon company bus driver shows a model of the anti-start breathalyzer fitted to the transport company's fleet of 25 school buses on September 9, 2009 in Berson, as part of a new national safety system. road.
Current Available COVID-19 Testing Methods
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that COVID-19 tests could detect SARS-CoV-2 or antibodies formed after getting infected with the virus or after getting vaccinated. CDC identifies two types of COVID-19 tests that tell whether a person has an infection at the time of the test or past infection.
These tests play a crucial role in reducing the spread of COVID-19 because rapid detection also means rapid implementation of health measures to avoid further transmission. Results should always b consulted with the healthcare providers.
One type of COVID-19 test is the viral test that tells whether SARS-CoV-2 is present in the body. The two types of viral tests are the - rapid point-of-care tests and laboratory tests.
Rapid point-of-care tests are interpreted by someone other than the individual being tested and can be performed in minutes. Laboratory tests could take days for the results to come out. Some examples of this test are the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and other types of Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAATs).
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SER-Based Breathalyzer for Mass Screening of COVID-19
Cleveland Clinic reported that RT-PCR tests are the gold standard of testing for COVID-19 even though it requires an uncomfortable nasopharyngeal swab for samples and takes days before the results come out. But with the need for rapid detection of COVID-19 infections, some scientists have now turned to analyze breath volatile organic compounds.
Scientists posted a paper titled "Noninvasive and Point-of-Care Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)-Based Breathalyzer for Mass Screening of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) under 5 min," published in the ACS Nano. It was a study about a breathalyzer-type test for COVID-19 that rely on the differences of volatile organic compounds exhaled by infected individuals.
The news release from the American Chemical Society (ACS) via EurekAlert! reported that this breathalyzer uses a chip with three surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensors in its silver nanotubes. The patient only needs to exhale into the device for 10 seconds for the sensors to detect the virus.
The breathalyzer can characterize the compounds based on their molecular vibrations using a portable Raman spectrometer. Researchers found that it has a 3.8% false-negative rate and 0.1% false-positive rate compared to RT-PCR tests. It can be completed on-site in less than 5 minutes. They hope the breathalyzer could someday become a tool to prevent transmission of COVID-19.
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