No light means all right.
A bioengineering team from Harvard and MIT is designing a face mask that glows when it comes in contact with COVID-19.
“As we open up our transit system, you could mention it being used in airports as we go though security, as we wait to get on a plane,” MIT bioengineer professor Jim Collins told Business Insider. “You or I could use it on the way to and from work. Hospitals could use it for patients as they come in or wait in the waiting room as a prescreen of who’s infected.”
These same researchers in 2014 developed a similar mask with sensors that could detect the Ebola virus under specific conditions, and in 2016 reworked it for the Zika virus.
The special face mask emits a fluorescent signal when someone with the coronavirus breathes, coughs or sneezes.
The team is also toying with the mask’s design, debating whether to embed sensors on the inside or develop a module that can be attached to any mask.
Doctors could potentially utilize the equipment to immediately diagnose patients, without collecting samples and running them through extensive lab testing.
Although Collins cautions that the coronavirus mask is in the “very early stages,” he is pleased by the results. Over the past few weeks, his fellow researchers have been testing the sensors’ ability to detect COVID-19 in saliva samples.
“Once we’re in that stage, then it would be a matter (of) setting up trials with individuals expected to be infected to see if it would work in a real-world setting,” explained Collins.
