United States’ leading healthcare firm ABBOTT has announced that its cheap, fast and easy to use antigen test has received FDA’s emergency use authorization.

The test is conducted through a credit card-sized device that uses technology similar to home pregnancy tests. The test delivers results in just 15 minutes with no instrumentation required and costs around $5 (about Rs400).

In India, the current RT-PCR tests cost around Rs2,500 and it often takes 1-3 days to get the result due to complexity of procedures-collection, storage and testing in specialised labs- involved.

“It runs off a nasal swab. Then, the patient's nasal sample gets inserted directly into the “BinaxNOW card”, and a colored line appears if the test is positive for coronavirus,” say the experts.

The company is also launching an app that syncs up with the tests, and gives people who test negative for the virus a “digital health pass” that they can display on their phone at the entrance of offices, schools, airports etc.

BinaxNOW works by detecting the small proteins on the surface of the coronavirus, rather than the genetic sequences of the virus itself. “Tests that look for proteins instead of the virus tend to be less accurate,” doctors say.

Abbott says that the test correctly diagnoses a coronavirus infection 97.1 percent of the time, and correctly returns a negative result 98.5 percent of the time.