The WHO keeps repeating it, the scientific council makes it a prerequisite for any deconfinement: the generalization of screening tests has become a major issue in the management of the covid-19 epidemic. However, so-called PCR tests, which detect the presence of the virus in the human body, take time. It takes between three and six hours for the results to be available. Not to mention the potential delivery time.
Perhaps the situation could quickly change. In a press release issued this Friday, CNRS researchers announced that they are ready to launch a clinical study with counterparts at the Montpellier University Hospital for the implementation of a screening test for coronavirus by salivary route, with results that would be available after thirty minutes. The study will begin this Saturday. In order not to waste time, the researchers also let it be known that the development, production and distribution chain is organizing for a rapid and massive deployment of the test to healthcare personnel from May.
Result visible to the naked eye
This test, if it proved to be effective, could be carried out very simply, explains the press release. “You just have to take saliva, one of the main vectors of the virus, and place it with the reagents at 65 ° C for 30 minutes. The nursing staff can then read the result with the naked eye, ”we can read. "It is a tube in which we will dip a small tongue with a small ring that we will put under the tongue," says Franck Molina, researcher at CNRS, with RTL. Just heat it for a few minutes at 65 degrees. There will be a color change if you are infected with the virus, or the color will remain pink if you are not infected. "
To carry out the blind clinical study, 180 people were recruited by the research consortium. Concretely, it will be a question of testing by the salivary method of patients tested positive for covid-19 as well as hospital staff presumed to be negative.
If the tests prove conclusive, the researchers say they are doing everything to ensure that they can be made available as quickly as possible to nursing staff, city doctors or even nursing homes. Thus, if the test still requires heating to 65 degrees, "the development and industrialization of a nomadic heating device are already underway", specifies the CNRS.