After realising how time consuming COVID-19 tests are, Kenya scientists have recently discovered a faster way of carrying out the tests efficiently.
Kenya has already put to test the new method of testing the virus. Of the 300,000 people tested, a number of 350 unfortunately succumbed to the virus but over 8,000 people tested negative to the virus in a short time of testing.
Health officials have often said that the testing procedure doesn’t only tire but also consumes too much time. This has led Dr Moses Masika, a virologist at University of Nairobi discovering faster ways of testing the pandemic in the lab.
Dr Moses has discovered that scaling of tests is one of the most efficient ways to stop the rate of infection. While explaining this to the Healthy Nation, Dr Moses said:
“Targeted mass testing in areas with high cases and on persons who by nature of their occupation may be exposed to infection is one way of scaling mass testing. But, mass testing ought to be scaled to randomly test and retest to determine prevalence.”
A group of scientists from the Nanyang technological University at Singapore’s Lee Kong School of Medicine have also found a way of improving the method of testing that will scale up the speed of testing.
The new method has improved and produces results of the COVID-19 tests in just 36 minutes which is only a quarter of the time that is required by the current global testing standards for COVID-19. Tests will also be done on portable equipment.
“The new method we now have combines many of the existing testing steps, but allows direct testing on the crude patient sample. This cuts down the turnaround time from sample to result and removes the need for RNA purification chemicals,” said Dr Eric Yap, who led the team of scientists.
“The new method now involves a single tube reaction that reduces hands-on time and biosafety risk for lab personnel. It also eliminates the likelihood for carryover contamination during sample processing,” showed the findings published in the scientific journal Genes.
