Since the ancient time, infectious diseases have been posing serious threats to the human health and social development, causing far more human deaths than the wars collectively. To date, more than 230 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide. The ravages and threats of the virus, as well as the death of relatives and friends, have brought great distress to people globally.
Limitation
Currently, the existing detection methods such as RT-PCR, antibody detection and antigen detection have some limitations including time-comsuming, high detection limit, professional operation needed and high equipment requirements. These make it difficult for citizens to get access to sufficient and accurate diagnosis of infectious disease.
Model
We developed a SAIR-Q-D infectious disease model based on the real situation. Based on our prediction, timely and accessible infection detection plays an important role in the epidemic control. In our modeling, we proposed two groups of infected individuals who showed no symptoms but could act as asymptomatic transmitters. Individuals in the groups 1 and 2 were diagnosed 3 and 10 days, respectively, after being infected. The first group with timely confirmative tests exhibited 3 times lower capability in causing infection and death cases of the society with a slower case growth than the second group did (shown in the right figure). Our data suggested that sufficient and accessible infection tests could prevent tremendous people from being infected, save many lives, and subsequently slow down the pace of a pandemic. This can help us win more time to develop drugs and vaccines for the treatments and protection. On the [Model] page, you can see the details of the model and its practical application.
Idea
What we want to do is not just to reduce the time window of virus detection, but also to construct a rapid detection platform. As long as a new pathogen appears, we can quickly adapt our protocol to test it. We have achieved the programmability of the detection platform to respond to different types of emerging pathogens, and only need to change a few components prior to its immediate test and application. In addition, we also ensure that the detection will be sensitive, specific and convenient. On the [Design] page, you can see how this was achieved.
