The need for a test which happens in seconds instead of hours or days - which detects if a person has COVID-19 or whether he is a bearer of the illness and therefore a vector to spread it right now…is priority number 1, right after an omnipotent variant-indifferent vaccine.

We have seen significant advances on that side of things - but they are not enough.

So after seeing the documentary produced by the BBC Two, “Horizon - coronavirus especial”“. I got the idea to do a test which can be applied by oneself (without possible missteps) and get the results in 1 minute. The idea is to get the testers through a drive-thru NHS stop (or) similar facilities equipped with this technology) so we can know who should come in the hospital (conveniently located on the proximity of the setup) and who should not.

The goal is to produce that piece of equipment but still keep false positives very low and false negatives close to 0 (here lays the challenge).

Let’s see where this unexplored avenue takes us.

Update

As of today the UK has funded a company to provide in-situ tests in 20 minutes. This is a great first step but we are still light years away from what’s needed - an instantaneous response which can be applied by a trained individual in a drive-thru setup (like an assembly line) and where people don’t have to wait around.

Edited on: 27/07/21 - clean up grammatical errors.