Congratulations to Prof. Ali Yuzir, alumni of the Collaboration Education Program (CEP), and team members in completing the Special Program for Research against Covid-19 (SPRAC) and the research project “Rapid detection of COVID-19 virus in human nasopharyngeal swab specimens using Raman scattering based sensors.”
The system is designed to be portable so that it may be used in-situ COVID-19 virus infection detection tests anywhere and built to run large-scale detection tests simultaneously on many swab samples.
This is another important step toward expanding the existing body of knowledge in the engineering priority areas. COVID-19 continues to affect people’s daily lives, and the cost of detecting it remains high, mainly because the results take a considerable time to report. This research project demonstrates the possibility of reducing costs and reporting time while maintaining virus detection efficiency. Moreover, in terms of convenience, medical personnel or volunteers can take the equipment to various places since it is small and easy to move.
Keywords
- Performance is comparable to the PCR test
- The detection time of COVID-19 is faster than for RT-PCR
- The cost is less than the RT-PCR test
- Portable
Finally, the research project has contributed to the creation of prototypes to detect the COVID-19 virus in humans and a Patent filed under the title “Compact surface enhanced-Raman scattering system as a diagnosis tool kit for COVID-19” on behalf of the Innovation and Commercialization Centre UTM.
We look forward to hearing about more completed innovations very soon.
