Using your dirty smartphone for a corona test, it’s possible

Have a corona test done with a cotton swab in your smartphone, not your nose. Researchers have developed a reliable new test.

Meanwhile, countless people have already had cotton swabs pushed up their noses. It is not the most pleasant way to be tested for corona, but such PCR tests are relatively accurate. What if you could smear that same cotton swab over a greasy smartphone screen. And what if that is literally as accurate as a cotton swab in your nose? University College London has achieved just that.

Smartphone sample as a corona test

British researchers can test up to 81% accurately whether the owner has corona on the basis of a sample of someone’s smartphone, the ANP reports (via Business Insiders Netherlands). That’s just as accurate as a regular PCR test. The so-called Phone Screen Testing (PoST) has of course many advantages.

First of all, it is not at all uncomfortable for any patient to continue the test. That makes the threshold considerably lower to get tested. The smartphone corona test would also be much cheaper, the researchers claim. According to University College London, this is especially useful for poor countries. In such countries, only few corona tests are available anyway. Vaccination is also much slower there, so even longer tests are needed.

Corona spores would remain on smartphones for the first 2 to 3 weeks of an infection. Infected people leave corona traces on a smartphone when calling and swiping, which can then be traced. As a standalone conclusion: I need to clean my smartphone much more often!

One study is not a study

It must be said, however, that this ‘scientific’ news should be viewed with a little skepticism. No, I do not intend to set 5G cell towers on fire, but I do intend to nuance the research. In science, one research is actually not research.

Independent investigators should test the conclusions and research . Those peer reviews need to be peer-reviewed again before we can finally say unequivocally that a smartphone corona test is a good excuse not to have to put cotton swabs in our nose. Until then, this is just a promising study that above all requires more research.

Also read: Dutch corona app is a hit