Covid home test kits that give results in an HOUR will be available for public to buy for £40 in weeks – as thousands have already been sent to hospitals across UK
- DnaNudge test has been given green light after trial at London hospitals
- Home kits will cost £40 and will be made available once firm has CE marking
- Can diagnose Covid-19 in just over an hour and does not give false negatives
- Production will be ‘rapidly increased’ to one million tests by end of the year
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
A new test that can detect coronavirus in just an hour has been approved for clinical use and could soon be on sale to the public for £40.
The DnaNudge test does not require any medical expertise and can detect the virus from just a nostril sample – much less invasive than some throat swabs.
After successful trials on 500 patients in London hospitals, the ‘lab in a cartridge’ device was approved for clinical use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) at the end of April.
And Brits will soon be able to buy the test to use at home for £40 after the inventors announced plans to ‘rapidly increase’ production to one million tests a month by the end of the year.
The DnaNudge test does not require any medical expertise and can detect the virus from just a nostril sample. It has been given clinical approval and
The Government made an initial order of 10,000 DnaNudge cartridges in March and has procured another 70,000 since.
The test, developed by Imperial College London’s Chris Toumazou, is based on the design of a DNA test and can give a result in just over an hour, significantly cutting down on the 48-hour wait for a laboratory diagnosis.
Once a swab is taken, it’s inserted into a handheld reader that provides results within just 75 minutes.
‘It is a lab in a cartridge effectively,’ said Chris Toumazou, a professor of engineering at Imperial College who developed the test.
‘The key is that with this test you go straight from a saliva swap or a nasal swab into the cartridge with no transport and no laboratory.’
After successful trials on 500 patients in London hospitals, the ‘lab in a cartridge’ device was approved for clinical use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) at the end of April
‘You can even look at such small fragments of the RNA (Ribonucleic acid) that you can check whether a patient is coming out of it or going into COVID,’ Toumazou said.
The DnaNudge has a sensitivity of over 98 per cent and specificity of 100 per cent.
It can tell the difference between a person who doesn’t have the disease at all and a sample which wasn’t taken properly, meaning there aren’t any false negatives, according to the The Times.
Faster testing could allow more people to go back to work or permit testing on a more regular basis and could help Prime Minister Boris Johnson achieve his target of 200,000 tests a day, an important element in successfully ending the lockdown.
The Government was previously criticised for failing to meet the 100,000 tests on individuals a day by the end of last month.
The kit has now been delivered to A&E, maternity units and cancer wards at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, West Middlesex University Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital and at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital.
Dr Gary Davies, medical director of Chelsea and Westminster, said that the test transformed how the hospital dealt with suspected coronavirus patients.
‘This test does work and is actually more sensitive than some of the lab tests,’ said Dr Davies.
He added that the test was being used for patients coming into hospital to help decide on which ward to place them.