Nepal, May 16 -- Local researchers have invented a test kit that can tell if someone has antibodies that neutralise the coronavirus - in just one hour. Such a test is crucial in the war against Covid-19 and can be used for contact tracing, assessment of herd immunity and vaccine development.

It was announced yesterday that Duke-NUS Medical School would be co-developing and manufacturing the test kits together with biotechnology company GenScript Biotech Corporation and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's Diagnostics Development Hub.

The kits specifically detect the presence of neutralising antibodies, which play a key role in the body's defence against Covid-19.

When the coronavirus attacks a person, proteins on its shell...