Scientists have developed a test for COVID, which determines strains

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Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have successfully developed a test for COVID-19 that can identify, within hours, the specific strain a patient has contracted.

This is reported by The Jerusalem Post.

Determining the strain that a patient is infected with is one of the most important tasks of medical personnel during a pandemic. In addition, depending on the variant of coronavirus, treatment may also differ.

The test was based on the already existing rapid test for COVID -CoVarScan from SoRelle.

CoVarScan was designed to detect small mutations in the RNA sequences of a virus. It measures the length of repetitive genetic regions that tend to grow and shrink as the virus develops. The method is based on polymerase chain reaction – PCR.

Using this method, CoVarScan was able to correctly identify the Delta, Mu, Lambda and Omicron variants of COVID-19, including the Omicron BA.2 substrain.

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