Rapid test for Covid-19 shows improved sensitivity--MIT

Rapid test for Covid-19 shows improved sensitivity A CRISPR-based diagnostic for the SARS-Cov-2 virus can produce results in less than an hour with similar accuracy as the standard PCR test now used. Development of the Covid-19 test was led by researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 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 been working on a CRISPR-based diagnostic for Covid-19 that can produce results in 30 minutes to an hour, with similar accuracy as the standard PCR diagnostics now used.

The new test, known as STOPCovid, is still in the research stage but, in principle, could be made cheaply enough that people could test themselves every day. In a study appearing today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers showed that on a set of patient samples, their test detected 93 percent of the positive cases as determined by PCR tests for Covid-19. ...

In the new version of STOPCovid reported today, the researchers incorporated a process to concentrate the viral genetic material in a patient sample by adding magnetic beads that attract RNA, eliminating the need for expensive purification kits that are time-intensive and can be in short supply due to high demand. This concentration step boosted the test’s sensitivity so that it now approaches that of PCR.  ...