Singapore, June 30 -- A team of researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a portable COVID-19 micro-PCR diagnostic system - called Epidax - that enables rapid and accurate on-site screening of infectious diseases and significantly reduces the time required to analyse patient samples.

Epidax, which is a microfluidics-based PCR diagnostic system, is about the size of a toaster and very portable. It can be deployed quickly and easily on-site for virus infection screening.

Currently, nasal swab samples are first collected at a clinic or testing site, and sent to a laboratory for processing to extract the RNA, before the PCR test is conducted.

The Epidax system uses a specially designed microfluidic chip that c...