Professor Zhanfeng Cui and his team which includes Hall Fellow Professor Wei Huang are one of the winners of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s President’s Special Awards for Pandemic Service for their rapid viral RNA test for COVID-19.
This award recognises exceptional engineering achievements in tackling Covid-19 throughout the UK. The test detects whether a person is infected with ARS-CoV-2 virus and is still infectious. It does not require the use of specialist equipment and can be used by anyone. Users need only transfer samples from mouth or nose swabs, or saliva, into a test tube supplied with the test, containing all the necessary reagents. The test tube is then heated to 65°C for 30 minutes, after which results are shown by a simple colour change, allowing quick and easy interpretation.
We congratulate Wei and his team on this brilliant breakthrough in Coronavirus testing.
