Japan develops test to detect coronavirus within 30 minutes

The Kanagawa Prefectural Institute of Public Health and the government-affiliated research institute Riken said Thursday that they have developed a technology that can detect the COVID-19 coronavirus in only 10 to 30 minutes.

The institutes confirmed the validity of the new method using COVID-19 samples collected from people who were on the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined off Yokohama.

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Also from Japan - one hour test for COVID-19 by the end of March.

The newly developed method is a form of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, but skips the procedure to take out the DNA from the virus to minimize the time required for analysis.

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