DnaNudge, the firm that has developed the rapid, portable, lab-free CovidNudge test now in use in the NHS, has announced the consumer launch of the DnaNudge COVID “Bubble Test” – offering highly accurate COVID-19 group testing on one cartridge for “bubbles” of up to 10 people who do not have symptoms of coronavirus infection.
The UK Cypriot DnaNudge CEO and co-founder Regius Professor of Engineering at Imperial College Chris Toumazou said that “by making this transformative test more widely accessible, at very low-cost, our aim is to help improve the detection of asymptomatic yet infectious individuals and to support the huge effort to bring this virus under control and move us all forwards towards safety and a return to normality as soon as we possibly can.”
The rapid DnaNudge RT-PCR test is now open for online booking and is available by appointment only from DnaNudge’s flagship store in London’s Covent Garden, and will be available as an at-home, by-post service throughout the UK within weeks.
Up to ten people in a work, friends, family or other close contact bubble can be tested at the same time – on the same DnaNudge testing cartridge – at a cost of £10 per person, with results delivered within 90 minutes.
The DnaNudge COVID testing service is available specifically for people without symptoms looking for reassurance about whether they could be infectious – including essential workers – or who require PCR test confirmation of their COVID-19 status before travelling abroad.
The test accurately detects the presence of SARS-CoV-2 from individual nasal or saliva swab samples, which are processed in a cartridge containing “bio-marker” microchips.
For the DnaNudge COVID Bubble Test, sputum (phlegm) samples are provided in-store by all individuals in the testing pool – up to ten people at a time – and processed by DnaNudge on-the-spot in a single DnaNudge testing cartridge, using DnaNudge’s NudgeBox RT-PCR analyser.
For the soon to be launched at-home service, samples will be able to be provided securely by post. If a positive result is detected for the pool, swabs from each individual retained from the initial sample collection are processed to identify the positive case (or cases) within the ‘bubble’.
(CNA)
