A medical expert has developed a £2 coronavirus test which can give results in five minutes, he claims.
Professor Maneesh Singh believes his company Biocel Analytics has come up a game-changer that will smash the current 48 hours or longer people are waiting to see if they have the deadly virus.
Competitors from across the fields of science have joined the race in recent weeks to find a solution as the pandemic continues to ravage the world.
The new invention makes use of infrared microspectroscopy which can identify and study chemical substances' makeup.
Patients must give a swab sample taken from inside the mouth before the device creates a unique 'fingerprint' spectrum representing a positive or negative result.
The algorithm that the fingerprint's data goes through was developed by Prof Singh and his colleagues in just a week, reports HullLive.
"It's a robust emerging technique," said the former obstetrician who was born and raised in Hull, Yorkshire.
"We're not after any profits, it's about making a scientific breakthrough. We're in a major crisis. This has been likened to war and war is when tech comes to the forefront and people have to work more rapidly.
"The government don't have to take it, but we just want to be in a position to offer a potential solution for their consideration."
Prof Singh hopes to send the fingerprint spectrum data via Bluetooth to an app for any mobile device which has the algorithm embedded in it, so the result can be given almost instantly.
He comes from a family of NHS employees, including an anaesthetist brother and GP father - and said any profit from the new product would go into further research.
"We're here to help our colleagues, really, so we want to develop this as rapidly as possible," continued Prof Singh.
"The sudden emergence of Covid-19 meant we believed we could do something to make a difference, so we've just gone for it whole-heartedly.
"We felt we had to give it a shot.
"I'm not the type to sit back in a crisis, I like to take control, so it's quite tough to not be as involved as I was in the NHS, but I wanted to try to do something in a different way."
The field of infrared spectroscopy has been used for a number of years in other areas of medicine, with previous studies showing the method can also be used in the diagnosis of ovarian cancer and Alzheimer's Disease.
"That means the infrastructure put in place at a time of war will still be used in a time of peace," he said.
Though medical tests normally have to undergo years of rigorous testing and meet strict regulations, the Government has loosened some requirements to allow potential tests and other research into the virus to progress more quickly to meet the speed of the pandemic.
Prof Singh said that, with another study to be imminently published in the science journal 'Nature' and partnership with at least one NHS trust expected to help develop the technology, it could be just days before they have tested enough samples to attest to the accuracy of their method.
He said they hope to run the test alongside the typical method currently used to confirm their results.
"In a study of a thousand samples, we'll run it alongside the current methods to make sure it's accurate," he said.
"With the regulatory process being sped up, if you can prove you have a test that is reliable, which we will be able to do within three or four weeks, within a couple weeks we can be testing patients alongside regular tests."
Professor Francis Martin, Prof Singh's supervisor during his PhD at the University of Lancaster 13 years ago and his long-term mentor, said there had been a great interest in developing the interdisciplinary approach for a number of years.
"It's using physics to solve a biological problem, and it's been used for a number of biological problems before in oncology and neurodegenerative diseases, and in this case virology in the diagnosis of COVID19," he said.
"The good thing about this 'fingerprint' measurement is that it is numerical data, an objective measurement which can be put into an algorithm.
"This allows in real time for the sample to be categorised and classified, so if you have developed an algorithm to distinguish between healthy versus infected, then you can say if a sample is infected or uninfected.
"So it's a very powerful tool."
Having discussed the new test with Prof Singh, Prof Martin noted that a similar test - using a sample of blood rather than saliva - could be used to test if someone is immune to the disease by seeing if they have developed the antibodies specifically produced by the body to fight Covid-19.
The tests would therefore allow NHS staff who may be self-isolating after experiencing relevant symptoms or being exposed to the disease - currently affecting one in four staff - to see if they are infected or even immune and, where possible, get back to work as quickly as possible.
Explaining the method further, Prof Martin said: "Uninfected samples will be made of saliva and cells and cell linings from inside the mouth.
"But the reason Covid-19 is so infectious is because it concentrates in the upper respiratory tracts, so when someone coughs or sneezes it gets sprayed everywhere.
"So if you take a swab from an infected person, those particles have their own chemical constituents which will modify the fingerprint signature.
"So once you set a range to account for age, gender, medication people are taking, even pregnancy, anything outside that normal range can be categorised as positive for the virus.
"There has been a lot of interest in the technology in a clinical testing setting and the bureaucracy associated with that in the UK is laborious and takes time to navigate through, but in these unfortunate times I think the Government and regulatory bodies are being more flexible to allow them to fast track into the care settings where they are needed."
