Translated by: Cao Mi, Wu Xia

On March 31, Medical Research Institute of Zhongnan Hospital announced that a new rapid nucleic acid detection method for COVID-19 was developed by the team led by Prof. Yin Hao and Prof. Zhang Ying, which can shorten the waiting time for the result to 20 minutes. The finding was published online in the latest issue of Nature Biomedical Engineering.

In the context of the continuous spread of COVID-19 and its mutant strains, rapid screening is of paramount importance for the disease sourcing and pandemic control. Currently, RT-qPCR detection method is employed, which takes roughly 6 hours from sampling to gaining the result due to its dependence on the professional laboratory instruments and professional operation.

The team led by Prof. Yin Hao and Prof. Zhang Ying at Medical Research Institute of Zhongnan Hospital and Frontier Science Center for Immunology and Metabolism of Wuhan University developed a new rapid nucleic acid detection method, sPAMC. With high sensitivity and specificity, it is easy to operate and can shorten the waiting time.

With 204 pharyngeal swab samples, the results were 94.2% accurate and there were no false positives found. It took only 20 minutes to detect the virus, and the results could be observed by portable UV or blue light irradiation, which made the test more convenient.