A portable screening device for SARS-CoV-2 with smartphone readout

Since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, great emphasis has been placed on the development of rapid virus detection devices, the principle of operation of many of which is the detection of the virus structural protein Spike. Although several such devices have been developed, most are based on visual observation of the result, without providing the possibility of its electrical processing. This paper presents a biosensor platform for the rapid detection of Spike protein both in laboratory conditions and in swab samples from hospitalized patients that have been correlated with qRT-PCR method. The platform consists of a microcontroller based readout circuit, which measures the capacitance change generated in an interdigitated electrode transducer by the presence of the Spike protein. The circuit efficiency is calibrated by its correlation with the capacitance measurement of an LCR meter. The test result is made available in less than 2 minutes through the microcontroller’s LCD screen and at the same time the collected data is sent wirelessly to a mobile application-interface. In this way, the continuous and effective screening of SARS-CoV-2 patients is facilitated and enhanced, providing big data statistics of covid-19 in terms of space and time.