A team of researchers has developed a rapid Covid-19 test that might help in identifying different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 in just hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After developing CoVarScan, a rapid Covid-19 test that detects the signatures of eight hotspots on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, last year, the team now tested that on more than 4,000 patients’ samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers reported that their test is as accurate as other methods used to diagnose Covid and can successfully differentiate between all current variants of SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Using this test, we can determine very quickly what variants are in the community and if a new variant is emerging,” said researcher Jeffrey SoRelle from the University of Texas Southwestern in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It also has implications for individual patients when we are dealing with variants that respond differently to treatments,” SoRelle added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Compared to whole-genome sequencing, CoVarScan had 96 per cent sensitivity and 99 per cent specificity, the researchers said, in a study, published in the journal Clinical Chemistry<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It identified and differentiated Delta, Mu, Lambda, and Omicron variants of Covid-19, including the BA.2 version of Omicron, once known as “stealth Omicron” because it did not show up on some tests designed to detect only the Omicron strain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While several other tests for Covid-19 exist, they generally detect either a fragment of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material or small molecules found on the surface of the virus and don’t provide information to identify the variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, many researchers worry that these tests aren’t accurate in detecting some variants — or may miss future strains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To determine which variant of Covid-19 a patient has, scientists typically must use whole-genome sequencing, which is time-consuming and expensive, relying on sophisticated equipment and analysis to spell out the entire RNA sequence contained in the viruses, the team said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In early 2021, SoRelle and his team wanted to track how well current tests were detecting emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2. But they realised that sequencing a lot of specimens would not be timely or cost-effective, so they designed their own test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“A common critique of this kind of test is that it requires constant adjustment for new variants, but CoVarScan has not needed any adjustment in more than a year; it is still performing very well,” said SoRelle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In the future, if we did need to adjust it, we could easily add as many as 20 or 30 additional hotspots to the test,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A team of researchers has developed a rapid Covid-19 test that might help in identifying different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 in just hours. After developing CoVarScan, a rapid Covid-19 test that detects the signatures of eight hotspots on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, last year, the team now tested that on more than 4,000 patients’ samples. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":277821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}