A team of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis has developed an indoor air quality monitor to identify infectious diseases in a public space, starting with the detection of COVID-19. The device they created could detect if someone in a room or wing of a building is infected. It’s a real-time pathogen air quality monitor that can detect COVID-19 viral particles an infected person is shedding in about 5 minutes!

“Using our device, even if you have one person in a standard classroom shedding, it will take between three to five minutes to detect it, using the biosensor,” said Rajan Chakrabarty, PhD, associate professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering.

John Cirrito, PhD, professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine, already had the biosensor.

“We had a great biosensor for Alzheimer’s disease that we knew we could detect proteins very quickly,” said Cirrito.

So, the researchers worked together to create the pathogen air quality monitor.