A ‘Wearable’ Capable of Detecting COVID-19 at Lower Levels

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 healthcare 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.”