A new 90-minute COVID-19 test has been shown to have more than 94 per cent sensitivity and 100 per cent specificity.
In an article published in the Lancet Microbe, scientists led by Imperial College London present a diagnostic accuracy assessment of the novel, rapid point-of-care real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction CovidNudge test, which requires no laboratory handling or sample pre-processing.
In the research, the high-speed test was used on 280 NHS staff members with suspected COVID-19, 15 patients in the emergency department with suspected COVID-19 and 91 hospital in-patients (some of whom were not displaying COVID-19 symptoms).
The lab-in-cartridge rapid testing device was shown to have a high level of accuracy and produced very few false negatives and no false positives.
The percentage of those found to be positive for COVID-19 was 18 per cent. Sixty-seven samples tested positive on the CovidNudge test, compared with 71 positive results against a range of NHS standard laboratory machines.
The test is currently being used successfully across eight London hospitals and is due to be rolled out at a national level. The UK government recently placed an order for 5.8 million of the testing kits.
To perform the test, a paediatric-sized nose swab from a patient is inserted into the device, which then looks for traces of genetic material belonging to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A result is available within 90 minutes, compared to conventional COVID-19 testing which delivers a result in 24 hours. The test is now being developed to simultaneously assess for influenza A, influenza B and respiratory syncytial virus as well as COVID-19.
Professor Graham Cooke, lead author of the study from the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial, said: “These results suggest the test, which can be performed at a patient’s bedside without the need to handle any sample material, has comparable accuracy to standard laboratory testing. Many tests involve a trade-off between speed and accuracy, but this test manages to achieve both. Developing an effective bedside test in under three months has been an incredible collaboration between teams of engineers, clinicians and virologists.”
