Robert F. ServiceScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.Researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to come up with a test that detects the pandemic coronavirus in just 5 minutes.
The diagnostic doesn’t require expensive lab equipment to run and could potentially be deployed at doctor’s offices, schools, and office buildings.“It looks like they have a really rock-solid test,” says Max Wilson, a molecular biologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara. “It’s really quite elegant.”CRISPR diagnostics are just one way researchers are trying to speed coronavirus testing.