Working with the West China Hospital of Sichuan University and CapitalBio Corporation, Professor Cheng Jing’s team from Tsinghua University School of Medicine successfully developed the "Respiratory Virus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit (Isothermal Amplification on Disk Chip)" (SARS-CoV-2 is among these six viruses), the first in the world to detect the six types of respiratory virus simultaneously, within 1.5 hours.
Except for the SARS-CoV-2, this detection kit can detect five other viruses at more than twice the speed of other licensed single-type virus detection kits. This helps to speed up differential diagnosis of viruses with similar symptoms.
Faster: It reduces the detection time to only 1.5 hours, while each set of instruments can detect 16 samples simultaneously.
More comprehensive: It can detect as many as six respiratory viruses, reducing misdiagnosis and cost by distinguishing flu from COVID-19.
Safer: It effectively protects medical staff from infection based on the completely sealed chip design.
So far, the invention has been approved by Chinese regulatory authority, National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), as emergency medical devices, and is being used against the epidemic, providing a rapid, accurate and efficient detection for frontline medical professionals.
Soon after NMPA approval, Tsinghua University provided four sets of testing equipment for Wuhan and donated testing chips and reagent for 12,000 persons, worth five million yuan. The equipment will be used for novel coronavirus diagnosis in Wuhan hospitals, including Union Hospital of HUST, Tongji Hospital of HUST, the makeshift Huoshenshan Hospital, and Hubei Provincial People's Hospital.
