The team at Washington University in St. Louis combined recent advances in aerosol sampling technology and an ultrasensitive biosensing technique to develop this new device, which is able to detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants in a room in around five minutes.

The device is cheap to produce and can monitor the presence of a virus in a room in real-time. In addition to Covid-19, it could also be used to prevent the spread of other respiratory virus aerosols, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

“There is nothing at the moment that tells us how safe a room is,” said Professor John Cirrito, one of the study's authors.“If you are in a room with 100 people, you don’t want to find out five days later whether you could be sick or not. The idea with this device is that you can know essentially in real time, or every five minutes, if there is a live virus.”

The team based their design on micro-immunoelectrode (MIE) biosensor that...