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The explosion of new coronavirus tests that could help to end the pandemic

Researchers are scrambling to find other ways to diagnose the coronavirus and churn out millions of tests a week — a key step in returning to normality.
  1. Giorgia Guglielmi

    1. Giorgia Guglielmi is a freelance science journalist in Basel, Switzerland.

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A health official collects a swab sample from a woman to test for coronavirus at a temporary free testing facility in New Delhi

Viral diagnostics often rely on a nasal-swab sample, and researchers are developing faster, simpler and cheaper methods of testing. Credit: Xavier Galiana/AFP via Getty

The timing couldn’t have been worse. In March, just as Thailand’s coronavirus outbreak began to ramp up, three hospitals in Bangkok announced that they had suspended testing for the virus because they had run out of reagents. Thai researchers rushed to help the country’s clinical laboratories meet the demand. Looking for affordable and easy-to-use tests, systems biologist Chayasith (Tao) Uttamapinant at the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology in Rayong reached out to an old acquaintance: CRISPR co-discoverer Feng Zhang, who had been developing an assay for the coronavirus inspired by the gene-editing technology.

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Nature 583, 506-509 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02140-8

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