Input Stories

People may soon be able to detect potential COVID-19 exposure through a wearable device, according to USA Today.

What it is: “It’s not available for everyone yet, but Yale University researchers have developed an easy-to-use clip-on device that can detect low levels of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the air around you, according to research published Jan. 11 in the peer-reviewed online journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.”

• The Fresh Air Clip is a 1-inch 3D-printed air sampler that collects air on an internal film and does not require a power source.

Better detection: The wearable is capable of detecting “low levels of virus copies that are well below the estimated SARS-CoV-2 infectious dose,” said the study’s author and chip creator Krystal Godri Pollitt, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and a Yale chemical and environmental engineering professor, in a press release about the research.”

• The earlier detection could better prevent viral spread.

Test run: Researchers asked 62 test subjects to wear the clips—some at work in restaurants, others in health care facilities, homeless shelters and at gyms—for five consecutive days between January and May 2021.

• Evidence of the virus was found in five clips “and detected levels of the virus below the amount that infects someone.”