eLife (Jun 2021)

Smartphone screen testing, a novel pre-diagnostic method to identify SARS-CoV-2 infectious individuals

  • Rodrigo M Young,
  • Camila J Solis,
  • Andres Barriga-Fehrman,
  • Carlos Abogabir,
  • Alvaro R Thadani,
  • Mariana Labarca,
  • Eva Bustamante,
  • Cecilia V Tapia,
  • Antonia G Sarda,
  • Francisca Sepulveda,
  • Nadia Pozas,
  • Leslie C Cerpa,
  • María A Lavanderos,
  • Nelson M Varela,
  • Alvaro Santibañez,
  • Ana M Sandino,
  • Felipe Reyes-Lopez,
  • Garth Dixon,
  • Luis A Quiñones

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70333
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

Read online

The COVID-19 pandemic will likely take years to control globally, and constant epidemic surveillance will be required to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, especially considering the emergence of new variants that could hamper the effect of vaccination efforts. We developed a simple and robust – Phone Screen Testing (PoST) – method to detect SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals by RT-PCR testing of smartphone screen swab samples. We show that 81.3–100% of individuals with high-viral-load SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal-positive samples also test positive for PoST, suggesting this method is effective in identifying COVID-19 contagious individuals. Furthermore, we successfully identified polymorphisms associated with SARS-CoV-2 Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants, in SARS-CoV-2-positive PoST samples. Overall, we report that PoST is a new non-invasive, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement smartphone-based smart alternative for SARS-CoV-2 testing, which could help to contain COVID-19 outbreaks and identification of variants of concern in the years to come.

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