Soon the end of swabs? In the United States, a company has developed a device capable of detecting Covid-19 in breath samples.
Indeed, the Inspect-IR company has developed a portable mass spectrometer, similar to a breathalyzer. The device is, according to its designers, capable of detecting the coronavirus in less than three minutes.
The results led the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States’ drug regulatory authority, to issue an emergency use authorization last Thursday.
This after the body has validated that the system is 91.2% reliable for the identification of positive test samples and 99.3% for negative results.
A device reserved for professionals
The size of a briefcase, the device is capable of performing 160 tests per day.
However, it is only intended for health professionals or authorized persons. The American company would have planned to manufacture a hundred devices per week.
This novelty represents “a new example of the rapid innovation of diagnostic tests for Covid-19”, welcomed Jeff Shuren, director of the Food and Drug Administration.
The latter added that the FDA “continues to encourage the development of tests for Covid-19 so that advanced technologies help address the current pandemic”.
