A new tool for monitoring COVID-19 may one day be right under your nose. Researchers at the University of California San Diego are developing a color-changing test strip that can be stuck on a mask and used to detect SARS-CoV-2 in a user’s breath or saliva.

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The project, which received $1.3 million from the National Institutes of Health, is aimed at providing simple, affordable and reliable surveillance for COVID-19 infections that can be done daily and easily implemented in resource-poor settings. It is part of the NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Radical (RADx-rad) program for COVID-19.

“In many ways, masks are the perfect ‘wearable’ sensor for our current world,” said Jesse Jokerst, professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and lead principal investigator of the project. “We’re taking what many people are already wearing and repurposing them, so we can quickly and easily identify new infections and protect vulnerable communities.”

The team will create test strips, or stickers, that can be put on any mask (N95, surgical or cloth). They will be designed to detect the presence of protein-cleaving molecules, called proteases, that are produced from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The idea is that as the user breathes through the mask, particles—including SARS-CoV-2 proteases if the user is infected—will accumulate in the test strip. At the end of the day or during a mask change, the user will conduct the test. The test strip is equipped with a blister pack that the user will squeeze, releasing nanoparticles that change color in the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 proteases. A control line on the test strip will show what a positive result should look like. It would be similar to checking the results of a home pregnancy test.

Read more at UC San Diego