On Oct. 15, 2020, scientists from the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics announced they had developed an extremely rapid diagnostic test that detects and identifies viruses in less than five minutes.

The method was able to differentiate with high accuracy SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, from negative clinical samples, as well as from other common respiratory pathogens such as influenza and seasonal human coronaviruses.

The method, published on the preprint server MedRxiv, was able to differentiate with high accuracy SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, from negative clinical samples, as well as from other common respiratory pathogens such as influenza and seasonal human coronaviruses.