This Could Determine If You Have COVID in Five Minutes, Experts Say – Yahoo Lifestyle

While millions of COVID tests have been administered throughout the U.S. and beyond, a new diagnostic tool promises to deliver results faster than any existing test. According to researchers, this new tool could help expedite mass testing, making it easier for people who need to quarantine to do so in a timely manner. Read on to discover how you could find out if you have COVID faster than ever before. And for more insight into the latest COVID research, Dr. Fauci Just Issued This Warning About Another New COVID Strain.

In a Jan. 4 preprint of a study published through medRxiv, researchers at England’s University of Birmingham announced the development of a new means of testing for COVID that takes under five minutes to detect the virus. Unlike prior means of testing for COVID, the test developed by the University of Birmingham researchers uses only traditional lab equipment and requires no administration of high heat to samples, like the PCR tests commonly used to detect the virus.

In a press release, Tim Dafforn, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Birmingham’s School of Biosciences, said that the new test has “the inherent sensitivity of an RNA test” but with significantly faster results. The new test “can be used in existing point of care devices and meets the need for testing in high throughput, near-patient, settings where people may be waiting in line for their results,” Dafforn explained.

The quick results provided by the new test, dubbed the Exponential Amplification Reaction (EXPAR), which samples single strands of DNA, could be promising in terms of not only mass testing, but getting the pandemic under control faster, experts say. “More rapid testing will allow us to unlock near patient testing, getting people safely back to work and controlling outbreaks when they happen,” said Andrew Beggs, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. However, mass vaccination will be an equally important piece of the puzzle in terms of getting the pandemic under control–read on to discover which states are getting vaccinations out the slowest. And if you’ve already been diagnosed with coronavirus, If You Have These 5 Symptoms, You’re at Risk of Long COVID.