Singapore-MIT develops blood test kit to detect antibodies against COVID in 10 minutes

SINGAPORE: A team of scientists from Singapore developed a blood test kit that can tell if a person has immunity against COVID 19 in 10 minutes, with up to 93 per cent accuracy.

The kit was developed by a team from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology SMART and Nanyang Technological University NTU SMART is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology research enterprise in Singapore.

The kit requires only a drop of blood and can detect if a person has antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID 19 in 10 minutes, compared to 24 to 72 hours needed for conventional laboratory testing, according to a joint news release on Thursday by SMART and NTU. The news release said that this will lead to large-scale testing of vulnerable subsets of the population, such as the elderly.