On Apr. 16, 2020, a team of researchers at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Ragon Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced they had developed a new diagnostics platform called STOP (SHERLOCK Testing in One Pot) COVID.

The test can be run in an hour as a single-step reaction with minimal handling, advancing the CRISPR-based SHERLOCK diagnostic technology closer to a point-of-care or at-home testing tool. The test had not been reviewed or approved by the FDA and was currently for research purposes only.