With millions of Americans being tested for COVID-19 every day, some struggle with the long wait for results.
But now researchers say there is a much easier and faster way to test for the virus, and it’s right under your nose.
“You scratch it, you smell it, and then you have a choice of these different windows and you choose which one,” says Derek Toomre, Ph.D., a professor at Yale University School of Medicine.
Toomre is part of U-Smell-It, a team that created a scratch-and-sniff app to help determine if someone has COVID-19 through the sense of smell.
“It will show how good your sense of smell is and if you do it really well, you will succeed,” said Toomre. “And if you don’t, it’ll say, ‘hey, you’ve had something.'”
Despite being less accurate than a COVID-19 diagnostic test, this product is much faster and cheaper. With results available in a minute and the cards costing 50 cents a pop, scientists say this scent app could outperform traditional tests at a fraction of the price.
“We all know the idea of testing people for fever as a way to find people with COVID,” said Roy Parker, Ph.D. a professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But that hasn’t worked very well.”
Parker says that only about 20% of people with COVID-19 will develop a fever, compared to 80% of people with COVID-19 who report a loss of an odor, a smell test is a much better indicator of COVID-19 infection than a temperature control.
“It would make a big difference because you would identify people who have COVID, but they have such mild symptoms that they don’t know and they are walking around and potentially infect other people and their families,” Park said.
Although it is commercially available, U-Smell-It is now seeking emergency clearance from the FDA with the goal of getting their scratch-and-sniff cards in their hands and under their noses as soon as possible.
“I see people say, ‘Hey, this isn’t serious’, and that’s fine, don’t take it seriously,” Toomre said. Let’s just try it and see if it works. And if you can’t smell that test and it says, ‘hey, something’s going on’ well, you know, you have to isolate and check out. “