Real-time Coronavirus Sensors are the “holy grail” as governments and businesses look to reopen safely

Several companies have offered COVID-19 air monitoring devices as a solution as businesses seek to develop ways to make workers and consumers feel comfortable about entering enclosed rooms during a pandemic.

These gadgets take in a lot of air and trap virus particles and everything else that’s floating around. The contents are then examined for the presence of COVID-19-causing new coronavirus, also known as SARS-CoV-2.

Several companies in the air quality and diagnostics sectors have quickly developed this technology, which is now accessible in several iterations. These businesses claim that the gadgets may be utilized in a variety of settings, including office buildings, airlines, hospitals, schools, and nursing homes.

The devices, however, do not provide real-time data and do not beep to inform individuals around that the virus has been found. Instead, the gathered samples must be sent to a lab for analysis, which is usually done using a procedure known as PCR (polymerase chain reaction).

This procedure takes several hours. When you include in the complications of physically transferring the samples to a lab, the time it takes to get results could be a day or more. Even so, developers of this type of technology claim that day-old air quality data has relevance.

“It doesn’t solve all of COVID-19’s problems,” says Milan Patel, CEO of PathogenDx, a DNA-based diagnostic business. However, it allows businesses to detect the existence of the virus without relying on people to self-report, and it gives everyone involved piece of mind, he claims. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know if a building is undertaking environmental monitoring before you go in?” Patel explains.

PathogenDx created an airborne SARS-CoV-2 detection device this year by merging its DNA testing capabilities with a Bertin Instruments air sampler. The cyclonic vortex in the gooseneck-shaped apparatus pulls in a large volume of air and traps any particles inside in a liquid. After collecting the sample, it must be delivered to a PathogenDx lab to undergo a two-step PCR process. The virus’s genetic code is amplified, allowing it to be discovered. According to Patel, adding a second phase to the process improves the test’s sensitivity. (PCR is also the gold standard for COVID-19 testing in humans.)

According to Patel, the device will be especially beneficial on flights, in huge office buildings, and in health-care facilities. If the device detects the presence of the virus on a plane, for example, the airline can notify passengers on that plane that they may have been exposed, he says. Alternatively, if the test for the flight is negative, the airline will “know that they didn’t just infect 267 passengers,” according to Patel.

Daily air monitoring in large office buildings can provide facility managers with a tool for early virus diagnosis. When the results of the tests start to come back positive, office managers may urge staff to work from home for a few weeks. The device might be used by hospitals to analyze trends, identify problem areas, and warn patients and staff about potential exposures.

Given that many virus carriers are unaware of their infection and may be hesitant to disclose positive test results to every business they’ve visited, air monitoring may be able to warn people to potential exposures in a way that contact tracing cannot.

Other firms throughout the world are releasing their own versions of SARS-CoV-2 air monitoring. Sartorius, based in Göttingen, Germany, claims that its technology was used to analyze the air in two Wuhan hospitals. (The virus was found in extremely low concentrations in isolation wards and ventilated patient rooms, but was found in larger concentrations in the patients’ bathroom facilities.)

Assured Bio Labs, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, promotes its air monitoring equipment as a means of assisting the American workforce in getting back to work. The Bobcat air sampling kit is available from InnovaPrep in Missouri, and Eurofins Scientific in Luxembourg boasts labs across the world that can evaluate such samples.

However, none of the commercially available diagnostics can provide results in real time. Jing Wang and Guangyu Qiu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, are working on this.

They developed a plasmonic photothermal biosensor that can detect SARS-CoV-2 without PCR. With a little more effort, Qiu, a sensor engineer and postdoc at ETH Zurich and Empa, believes the device may offer data in 15 minutes to an hour. “We’re attempting to reduce it to a lab on a chip,” Qiu explains.

The device uses localized surface plasmon resonance sensing transduction and the plasmonic photothermal phenomenon to combine an optical sensor with a photothermal component. However, before the device can be put to use in the real world, the researchers must figure out how to remove the virus’s genetic material from its membrane on board. Qiu claims that by the end of the year, he intends to have a prototype ready to test.