Israeli scientists develop rapid test for Covid strains

Israeli scientists have developed a rapid cost-effective test that identifies two of the mutated Covid-19 strains, Ben Gurion University (BGU) in southern Israel said.

migrator

Updated:3rd Mar, 2021 at 12:41 PM

The current standard for coronavirus variants testing is sequencing the entire virus genome, which is expensive and time-consuming, Xinhua news agency reported.

The new test, however, reduces the time needed to determine whether an infection is caused by a variant from days to hours, BGU said in a statement on Tuesday.

In their study, published on the preprint server MedRxiv, a team of BGU researchers has developed the rapid test based on the gene deletion that differentiates the variants from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain.

The team successfully tried their test on samples taken from the sewage system in the southern city of Beer Sheva.

Israeli scientists develop rapid test for Covid strains

Israeli scientists have developed a rapid cost-effective test that identifies two of the mutated Covid-19 strains, Ben Gurion University (BGU) in southern Israel said.

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