DARPA has a ‘game-changer’ coronavirus test that’s awaiting emergency approval, report says
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Though there is currently no known scientific cure for the disease known as COVID-19, researchers at the U.S.’s most advanced military agency has designed a coronavirus test that can identify people before they come infectious, according to a media report.
Described as a potential «game-changer,» the test came from a project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that was initially designed for diagnosing those who have become poisoned by germ or chemical warfare, The Guardian reports. It was repurposed for the coronavirus pandemic and may be able to detect the presence of the virus in as little as 24 hours after a person is infected.
“The concept fills a diagnostic gap worldwide,” the head of DARPA’s biological technologies office, Dr. Brad Ringeisen, said in an interview with the news outlet. If approved by the FDA under its emergency use approval (EUA), Dr. Ringeisen said that the test could be “absolutely a gamechanger.”
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The new form of testing looks at how a person’s body responds during its fight with the coronavirus, as opposed to just looking for the presence of the virus itself.
“We have evidence that diagnosis happens in the first 24 hours for influenza and an adenovirus,” DARPA’s Dr. Eric Van Gieson told the news outlet. “We are still in the midst of proving that with Covid-19. That said, we should know very soon after EUA.”
Fox News has reached out to the FDA with a request for comment for this story.
The test uses the same polymerase chain reaction machines that are done for nasal swab tests, Dr. Van Gieson said. “It’s a simple tweak. The infrastructure is already there.”
“We are all extremely excited,» Dr. Van Gieson, who helped repurpose the program for the pandemic, added. «We want to roll this test out as quickly as we can, but at the same time share with others who might want to implement in their own countries.”
If approved, the U.S. could carry out as many as 1 million tests a day, Dr. Van Gieson explained. Currently, testing capacity in the U.S. is approximately 250,000 per day.
Last month, researchers from Harvard University said at least 5 million tests per day need to be delivered by early June «to deliver a safe social reopening,» jumping to 20 million a day «to fully remobilize the economy» by late July.
DARPA was founded in 1958 by then-President Dwight Eisenhower as a response to the Russian launch of Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite launched into space.
The military agency is working on several fronts to overcome challenges related to COVID-19, including gene editing technologies via a new DARPA program known as Detect It with Gene Editing Technologies, or DIGET.
«With DIGET, it soon may be possible to not only confirm an influenza (or COVID-19) diagnosis, but also to determine the strain, the origin, and whether the strain is drug resistant,» DARPA says on its website. «In addition, DIGET tools could assess the severity of disease to guide how the patient is triaged and treated.»
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As of Monday morning, more than 3.52 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, more than 1.1 million of which are in the U.S., the most impacted country on the planet.
