Twelve months ago, Massood Tabib-Azar, a computer engineering professor at the University of Utah, began working on a sensor that could test for the Zika virus and send the results directly to a smartphone within 60 seconds using Bluetooth.
Now, as the coronavirus pandemic has brought the world to a standstill, Tabib-Azar is working to reconfigure the sensor to detect COVID-19. The sensor requires just a single drop of saliva to test for the virus and will display the results on the person's phone. The results can also be uploaded to a central database, allowing health officials to track the spread of the virus in real-time.
"You'd push the button, and it can send to a central location, Centers for Disease Control, or any other authority that you'd select in your options and then in real-time can update the map," said Tabib-Azar.
He plans to begin clinical trials within the next two months, which should last about one month. He hopes that by the fall, they can start mass-producing the sensors.
"In principle, you can put these devices in everyone's hand, and once we produce them in large scale inexpensively, then it's like any other that people want to have with them," he said.
Health officials have said that the U.S. needs to conduct at least five million tests per day in order to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Currently, the U.S. is testing around 300,000 people per day, using uncomfortable nasal swabs, which can take up to one week to provide results.
The FDA has approved a new test, which can provide results in about 15 minutes, but warned that those results may not be as accurate.
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