Aussie researchers develop rapid COVID-19 blood test
Test finds positive cases in about 20 minutes, says Monash University team
Australian researchers have developed a simple agglutination assay to identify COVID-19 positive cases in just 20 minutes.
In the blood test, created by researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, positive coronavirus cases cause red blood cells to cluster, which is easily identifiable to the naked eye.
The team said they were able to identify COVID-19 cases using just 25 microlitres of plasma from blood samples.
The 10 tests on clinical blood samples involved incubating a person’s plasma or serum with red blood cells previously coated with short peptides, representing pieces of coronavirus.
