Israel develops fast saliva test for COVID-19

Israel's largest hospital says it has developed a coronavirus test which takes less than a second to deliver a result. Patients rinse their mouth with saline wash and spit into a vial. It is then examined by a device which shines light and analyses the reaction of the sample. An algorithm then determines whether the reaction is consistent with COVID-19. The team at the Sheba Medical Centre, near Tel Aviv, said hundreds of patients were tested in an initial clinical trial. And the new technique had a 95 per cent success rate. Eli Schwartz is from the Centre for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at the center.