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Although the initial wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has abated in many countries, healthcare providers are still looking to identify as many COVID-19 patients as possible and contain the disease. Fast and accurate diagnosis is especially important when unsuspecting patients with a coronavirus infection come to the hospital with health complaints but don’t yet show symptoms of COVID-19.
Nasal swab samples analyzed by RT-PCR are currently recommended for the diagnosis of COVID-19, however, supply shortages, a wait time of up to two days for results, and a false negative rate as high as 1 in 5 mean alternative, large-scale COVID-19 screening tools are still being sought.
SARS-CoV-2 is known to damage lung tissue, and in a distinct way that doctors are now seeking to exploit for new diagnostic approaches. Many COVID-19 patients develop pneumonia, which can progress to respiratory failure and sometimes death. COVID-19 pneumonia is ...
