COVID-19 Breathalyzer Being Developed In Israel

An Israeli firm is developing a 30-second coronavirus breath test, a mass screening tool that will help people gain “the confidence to go back and act as normal” amid the coronavirus pandemic. The company, NanoScent, revealed on Friday that an extensive trial aimed to test the presence of live virus in Israel was able to deliver results with 85 percent accuracy.

Once completed, the COVID-19 breathalyzer will serve as a frontline tool that can help restore a sense of normality during the global health crisis. The product is expected to get regulatory approval within months of its completion.

In a statement, NanoScent chief executive officer Oren Gavriely said the breathalyzer would not replace lab tests. He also revealed that the idea of developing a coronavirus breath test dawned on him sometime in January while visiting the U.S. At the time, the coronavirus was already starting to spread across the globe and he felt that his company’s expertise in rapid recognition technology could somehow alleviate the crisis.

“We said we’ll invest one week into it and see what’s happening, and this one week never stopped,” he said.

The breath test begins with a few questions about symptoms and exposure to the coronavirus, shown on the phone of the person administering the test. The person undergoing the procedure then inhales through the nose, holds his breath, closes one nostril and exhales through the other.

After the person pushes his breath through a handheld tube into an air trap, the tube is plugged into a small device called a “scent reader,” which sucks the air out of the bag. Within seconds of the procedure, the results will appear on the phone of the person administering the test.

Gavriely revealed that the upcoming tool will rely on “odors and the pattern of odors.” He said that after analyzing the breath of around 1,000 COVID-19 patients in Italy, they were able to identify certain smells associated with the new coronavirus. “We pick up on a pattern, we record that pattern and then we can detect if someone has, or is suspected to have COVID-19,” he said.

NanoScent’s researchers are currently refining the virus recognition technology in northern Israel.