Heathrow studying 20-second COVID test

Airport hopes it will help unlock travel

COVID-19 tests that provide results in as little as 20 seconds are being trialled by Heathrow under plans to replace quarantine with mass screening of its 78 million travellers a year, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

It is working with Oxford and Manchester universities on three cutting-edge rapid tests to screen people on arrival and departure to minimize the risk of flying in or out of the airport.

It believes the scheme would help unlock travel to and from the government’s “red list” countries from which travellers have to quarantine for 14 days in the U.K.

Heathrow is to submit the results to Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in an effort to persuade them to replace quarantine with a comprehensive testing regime that could kick-start international travel and trade.

At least 30 other countries have already introduced border testing for COVID-19 but the U.K. government has been accused of dragging its feet and allowing trade competitors such as Germany and France to steal a march by introducing screening for arrivals.

John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s chief executive, told The Telegraph: “If we can find a test that is accurate, gets a result within a matter of minutes, is cost-effective and gets the government green light, we could have the potential to introduce wide-scale testing at the airport.”

Heathrow has already built a testing centre where passengers would pay $262 for a PCR test like those used by the NHS. A followup test five or eight days later would release people from quarantine early if negative.

However, the cost and the delay in getting results — up to 48 hours — could hamper a wider rollout. The airport is therefore working with Oxford and Manchester under the aegis of the government’s CONDOR test scheme to trial three new types of fast tests that could cost a fifth of the price.

One is a throat swab that produces results in 30 minutes, a second is a saliva-based test similar in style to a pregnancy test that comes back in 10 minutes and the third is a holographic microscope test pioneered for Ebola, which can produce results in as little as 20 seconds.

Some 250 Heathrow workers participated in the trial under which they took the tests that are likely to cost as little as $52, alongside a PCR test to evaluate accuracy. The results are now being evaluated by the universities before being passed to the government.

The Daily Telegraph