UK Rolls Out 90-Minute Rapid COVID-19 Test

London: United Kingdom has rolled out two new rapid tests for COVID-19. One of them is the 90-minute LamPORE swab test. It is developed by Oxford Nanopore, which is co-founded by Indian-origin CEO Gordon Sanghera.

The new test, which can distinguish between winter flu and COVID-19, will be available at hospitals, care homes and laboratories across UK.

According to reports, Oxford Nanopore will make 4.5 lakh of the swab tests available from the next week.

“LamPORE has the potential to deliver a highly effective and, crucially, accessible global testing solution, not only for COVID-19 but for a range of other pathogens. We are delighted to be working with the UK government to support and empower our communities to effectively manage testing at a national and localised level,” said Sanghera.

UK’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said that this new test has the same sensitivity as the popularly-used PCR swab test. This, however, has the added advantage of being processed in pop-up labs using a desktop GridION machine that can process up to 15,000 tests a day, or a palm-sized MinION that does up to 2,000 tests a day.

The second new rapid test uses a DNA “Nudgebox” machine to detect the virus. It will be available at NHS hospitals from September. This too will provide results in 90 minutes. These machines can process up to 15 tests on the spot each day without the need for a lab.

“The DnaNudge team worked with incredible speed and skill during the peak of the pandemic to deliver this highly accurate, rapid COVID-19 test, which requires absolutely no laboratory or pipettes and can be deployed anywhere with a direct sample-to-result in around just over an hour,” said Regius Professor Chris Toumazou FRS, CEO and co-founder of DnaNudge and founder of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.