Taipei Times
Date: Sep 18, 2020
By: Staff writer, with CNA

A Taiwanese research team has developed a COVID-19 test kit that can deliver results in about 15 minutes with 80 to 90 percent accuracy, the group said yesterday.

The rapid test is likely to be ready for the market by the end of the year, the team of researchers from the National Defense Medical Center and the National Health Research Institutes said during an introduction of the technology at a promotional event for the upcoming Taiwan Innotech Expo.

Lai Szu-chia (賴思佳), an associate researcher at the center’s Institute of Preventative Medicine, said that the two greatest challenges in developing the test were isolating viral strains and setting up a viral antigen bank, which took four months and three months respectively.

That work was necessary to maximize the sensitivity and specificity of the test kit, the two main factors that determine its performance, she said.

A highly sensitive test should capture all true positive results, while a highly specific test should rule out all true negative results, she added.    [FULL  STORY]