The COVID-19 pandemic has led to supply chain shortages of reagents and test kits, hampering the fulfilment of the urgent need of rapid clinical testing. To meet the need of the hour, researchers have developed a chip-based technology to ensure rapid testing within 30 minutes. Although multiple laboratories have developed diverse diagnostic solutions, quantitative RT-PCR remains the current gold standard for COVID-19 testing. However, it suffers from the limitations of high-volume reagents, specialized technical labor, expensive instrumentation, high costs, and a relatively high turnaround time.
Researchers from Canada have developed faster, user-friendly, sensitive technology that matches the gold standard of quantitative RT-PCR. The results have been published in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics . The kit consists of a disposable microchip with 30 microreactors containing 1.2 µL…
