A more comfortable COVID test with results in hours could soon be available in Illinois
Illinois could have a cheaper, quicker and more comfortable way to test for coronavirus if a newly approved product from the University of Illinois can be scaled up.
A saliva test is cheaper and potentially more effective than the nasal swab Americans have become familiar with during the COVID-19 pandemic. University researchers in Urbana earned emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin using the test.
Those getting tested “drool” into a sterile test tube, researchers said. Results are available within two to six hours rather than days or weeks, and the saliva test can accurately detect coronavirus in those who aren’t showing symptoms, said University of Illinois President Tim Killeen.
Early isolation of those testing positive slows the spread by limiting the number of people they come into contact with. It also makes contact tracing easier because there are fewer people to reach.
“Speed is the key. Fast and frequent,” said the coordinator of the project, Dr. Martin Burke, associate dean for research at the college of medicine.
The test can be deployed more rapidly and on a massive scale, which would allow schools and other institutions to test frequently and often to limit the spread of the virus — a practice known as surveillance testing. The University of Illinois, for instance, used the technology to test 10,000 faculty, staff and students in a single day this week, said Robert Jones chancellor of the university’s Urbana-Champaign campus.
“It’s not often that you get to see scientific breakthroughs roll out before your very eyes, but that is exactly what we had the pleasure of experiencing this summer,” Jones said.
The university has 20 different testing centers with two lines each and the capacity to test up to 20,000 people per day. When they first began testing in July, 1.5% of the tests came back positive. As they continued testing, they were able to reduce that rate to less than 0.2%, Burke said. A lower rate is an indication of more testing, but also of fewer coronavirus cases.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he hopes the state will be one of the first customers of a new university-related company, Shield T3, which will scale up production of the technology. Pritzker hopes to send saliva tests for widespread use at K-12 schools and long-term care facilities.
“This has potentially game-changing implications for our statewide testing complex as well as testing on a national level,” Pritzker said at a news conference in Chicago Wednesday.
University researchers said it was too early to determine when the saliva test would be readily available to the public, but they will not be available before school starts, Pritzker said.
Combined with wearing masks, social distancing, frequent hand-washing and contact tracing, the new testing capability could help the state control a resurgence of coronavirus. The metro-east region saw a 9.4% positivity rate on Wednesday.
The technology is related to a recently approved test from Yale. Saliva tests could soon be available nationwide, and University of Illinois researchers say they plan to share what they’ve found with as many scientific groups as possible so they can produce their own tests.
“The standard (nasal swab) process is too slow, it’s too expensive and it has too many supply chain bottlenecks in order to be able to do fast and frequent testing on scale,” Burke said.
Public health officials announced 2,295 new confirmed cases of coronavirus statewide Wednesday, including 25 additional confirmed deaths, for a total of 211,889 cases and 7,806 deaths since the pandemic began.
