Taiwan working on rapid test for Wuhan coronavirus based on SARS antibodies that would only take 10 minutes

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/02/27
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) is planning on using SARS antibodies to develop a rapid test to detect the Wuhan coronavirus which would take only around 10 minutes.

Huey-Kang Sytwu (司徒惠康), vice president of the NHRI, was cited by the Liberty Times as saying that at present, the principle behind developing a rapid screening reagent is to detect the virus using antibodies, such as the case with influenza. He said this generally involves taking a swab from the nose, placing it in a vial containing viral transport media, and dripping the contents into the sample well for testing.

These sorts of tests generally take 10 to 15 minutes to yield a result and have an accuracy level of about 50 to 60 percent. Sytwu said that in 2003 the NHRI and the National Defense Medical Center used the SARS virus to produce antibodies in mice.

Recently, it was found that the antibodies to SARS have the same antigens as COVID-19. Scientists at the NHRI believe that the SARS antibodies could be used to develop a new COVID-19 rapid screening test.    [FULL  STORY]