India, Oct. 22 -- Amid a rise in positive COVID-19 cases - and a reported backlog to book tests and receive results in Ontario - Health Canada has approved four rapid-testing devices that could return results within 15 minutes. University of Toronto researchers, meantime, are working on an approach that could produce results in five.

The project is a collaboration between researchers at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the department of chemistry in the Faculty of Arts & Science. It is being supervised by University Professors Ted Sargent and Shana Kelley.

Currently, the standard method of testing in Canada is based on a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which detects the RNA...