With the gigantic second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic finally making its presence felt in almost every nation across the world, there is an even bigger need for detecting the virus at the earliest in order to break its chain of spread.

According to estimates carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Tuesday (April 13), there were around 136,291,755 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,941,128 deaths.

While the global vaccination drive is on across the world to help tackle the virus with around 732,981,684 vaccine doses already administered, there is surely a need for better detection methods to curb the spread from the get-go. 

© John Hopkins Medicine

One such means has reportedly been established in Germany, with a Munich-based company called Semic RF, designing a unique eye scan test, which has the ability to identify the carriers of the disease within just three minutes. 

This is a major technological advancement to battle the Coronavirus, which has mutated and developed into multiple strains since it was first detected in Wuhan back at the end of 2019. 

According to a Reuters report, the Corona eye scan test has an accuracy rate of around 95 percent. "Semic RF has developed its scanning app with colleagues in the United States and, pending regulatory approval, hopes to start rolling it out there by the end of next month," says its managing director, Wolfgang Gruber.

The process of testing involves taking the photo of the person's eye with the help of a smartphone, with the eye scan then identifying the virus by means of a symptomatic inflammation called “pink eye.”

“We managed to isolate COVID-19 from over two million different shades of pink,” Gruber told Reuters. According to Gruber, the app has already tested more than 70,000 individuals and boasts the ability to process up to a million scans per second. 

He said the eye scan could be utilized to restore a level of normalcy amongst human civilization, as it could potentially be used to allow crowds of people to attend mass-attendance events like live music concerts and sports events like football matches. 

“You take your app, take a picture of both eyes, send it for evaluation, and then you can have the evaluated result stored as a QR code on the tested person’s smartphone,” said Gruber. 

Let's hope for everyone's sake that the new virus detection technology is available to every nation, as we really could do with some normalcy back among us. 

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