THE DEPARTMENT of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Health Research and Development supported a 14-month project of the Ateneo de Manila University on the expanded deployment of Covid19 tests.

The project is led by Marie Jennifer Reolo of the Ateneo de Manila University-Research Institute of Science and Engineering.

DOST Secretary Fortunato de la Pena said the study is entitled, “SWIFTeR: A focused study to validate a rapid, simple, and efficient isothermal Covid19 testing technology.”

De la Pena said the pilot clinical testing started with the samples collected from Ateneo’s Covid19 testing facility called BlueSwab.

He added that the first “prototype assay” showed evidence of SARS-CoV-2 detection from Covid19 positive patients.

“The assay requires optimization and refinement to further improve its sensitivity most especially that the experiment is transitioning from contrived samples (saliva spiked with gamma-irradiated virus particles) to bona fide human saliva samples,” he said.