What is the real-time update of Covid-19 detection by Raman spectrometer?

 Covid-19 is an infectious disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case of the disease was diagnosed in Wuhan, Hubei Province, People's Republic of China, in late 2019.

  Subsequently, the disease broke out in a large scale and rapidly spread all over the world, becoming one of the most deadly epidemics in human history. As of January 11, 2021, more than 90 million confirmed cases have been reported in 191 countries and territories, and more than 1.933 million patients have died. The spread continues. Estimates of the case fatality rate for the disease vary widely around the world, with the observed case fatality rate for the disease ranging from 0.5% to 5.0% in most countries as of 11 January 2020.

 The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2019 outbreak of coronavirus disease a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020. The 2019 coronavirus disease was assessed as having pandemic characteristics on 11 March 2020. Local transmission of the disease has occurred in most countries in all six WHO regional offices.

 Raman spectroscopy has been successfully applied to virus detection.

Current new coronavirus detection methods:

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and rapid detection method based on immunochromatographic test paper.

The first needs to take a throat swab sample first, and then send it to the laboratory medicine center. Medical staff receive patient samples in the reagent preparation area, and extract the nucleic acid of the sample in the sample preparation area. Amplify and replicate the nucleic acid sample, and finally analyze whether the nucleic acid in the sample can be matched with the standard sample in the amplification product analysis area, and check whether the result is positive through the instrument.

Although the PCR detection method has high sensitivity, its high cost and long cycle shortcomings require other detection methods to compensate. The rapid detection method is mainly based on immunochromatographic test paper, which uses colloidal gold to label biological macromolecules to make a test paper that can detect viral antigens or IGM antibodies in the patient's blood. This method can shorten the detection time to 20 millimeters. But the accuracy and sensitivity are limited, and the false positive rate is high.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy technology for detection of new coronavirus spike protein.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy （SERS ）technology is an emerging surface spectroscopy analysis technology, which can magnify the Raman signal of analytes by more than one million times.
This amplification is mainly derived from the enhancement of the local electromagnetic field caused by the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of metal nanostructures.
SERS technology has many advantages such as high sensitivity, high fingerprint identification, high resolution, non-destructive, fast, etc., which is very suitable for research fields based on molecular recognition and detection.

About the advantages of Optosky Miniature Raman microscope:

• Mapping :Through the sample detected in the selected area can display intuitively the content distribution.
• Image splicing:  Image splicing can realize Mappping of contents distribution in different colors in a selected area.
• Optosky instrument has Dual-bands wavelengths and three-bands wavelengths for you to choose from.
• We  recommend 532nm, 785nm, 1064nm wavelengths for virus and bacterial detection  .
• ATR8300MP is configured with tailor-made objective , the micro-Raman detection platform makes it possible to"seen and test" .
• With similar performance cost 30% less.

Advantages of Optosky Raman spectroscopy technology:

 No or very little pretreatment of the sample is required. No direct contact with the sample is required, and the sample can be measured directly through the transparent packaging material, which can reduce the risk of contamination of the final product. 
The use environment of the handheld Raman spectrometer is also very flexible. It can be used in the laboratory or directly on the production site. Each sample detection only takes tens of seconds, which can effectively reduce the analysis time and greatly improve the practicability.

The above is some detailed introduction about our Miniature Raman Microscope , you can contact us if you want to know more details.

The practical application of Raman spectroscopy in the detection of COVID-19.