NIH: Deep mutational scanning can help improve accuracy of rapid antigen COVID-19 tests

The National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Tech program was able to create a method called “deep mutational scanning” to be able to detect mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As a result, this would allow for accurate rapid testing in the future, despite there being more and more mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Because most rapid antigen tests detect the N-protein that is found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the researchers decided to generate a database of mutations of the N protein, which can represent a large amount of future mutations to the virus—more specifically, 99.5% of future mutations.

These results are a breakthrough in COVID-19 detection technology because of the way rapid antigen testing can be changed. Through change in testing, we can expect far more accurate results in the future because of future variants. Click here to learn more about SARS-CoV-2 detection in rapid tests.