Singapore
More people may soon be able to get tested for Covid-19 and know their results in less than a minute, thanks to a breathalyser test.
MORE people here may soon be able to get tested for Covid-19 and know their results in less than a minute, simply by breathing into a tube.
A test kit that can accomplish this has been developed by National University of Singapore spin-off Breathonix.
Following a successful trial at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), the company said yesterday that it was in talks with the Health Ministry to deploy its breathalyser tests in trials at public locations in the coming months.
Dr Jia Zhunan, chief executive of Breathonix, said the firm was also working to expand the NCID trial to include a further 250 patients in addition to the current 180.
The company’s chairman, Assoc Prof Neo Kok Beng, added that they were in talks with a “major hospitality player” here to deploy the tests at such events as conferences following approval from the Health Sciences Authority.
The company hoped to receive it in the first quarter of next year.
Prof Neo added that Breathonix had also received some requests from groups overseas for the tests to be rolled out there.
For the test, people blow into a disposable mouthpiece that is connected to a breath sampler.
A mass spectrometer analyses the invisible particles called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a person’s breath.
A healthy person will have a different VOC signature from someone who is ill, and different illnesses produce different signatures.
The results are generated automatically in under a minute, without the need for the sample to be processed elsewhere.
This makes the breathalyser test faster and more convenient than the current polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab tests, which require an external laboratory to process samples and take a few days for results to be returned.
The results of Breathonix’s test are also generated faster than those of antigen rapid tests (ART), which take at least 15 minutes.
The breathalyser test is also non-invasive, in contrast to the PCR tests and ARTs which require swabs to be inserted into a person’s nostrils and have been known to cause discomfort.
Additionally, unlike a PCR test which requires skilled laboratory technicians to process samples, Breathonix’s machine requires only about an hour of training for a layman to operate, said the company’s chief operating officer and co-founder Du Fang.
“Technically, anyone who knows how to operate a PC can do it,” he added.
In the recent NCID clinical trial, the breathalyser test also managed to pick up asymptomatic patients, although Jia said further studies and trials were needed to validate the results. — The Straits Times/ANN