The purpose, as described in a paper published in The Lancet, was to see if it was possible to run a large indoor event with low to no COVID transmission. In December last year, while Barcelona, Spain, was locked down and no more than six people were permitted to meet indoors, a music concert hosted 465 attendees. The researchers, who have described their test in Angewandte Chemie, hope to scale their testing up to a larger cohort. “The result can be derived in less than five minutes and a rapid result minimises the delay in determining if quarantine is required, therefore minimising the risk of further spread of infection.” “A person can contribute the sample by simply dribbling into a sterile container,” he says. This makes the test less accurate than a PCR test, but much faster.ĭamian Purcell, a professor at the Doherty Institute, says speed and convenience are the two major advantages of the test. Using this spectrum, they were able to spot 27 out of 29 positive COVID-19 patients they tested. Having previously used a similar technique to detect malaria and hepatitis, the researchers identified an infrared spectrum from an infectious COVID-19 viral agent in saliva. Since this light is absorbed by molecules in different ways, the spectrum generated by shining it through a substance can give scientists some indication of what’s in the substance. Infrared light is commonly used to identify molecules and substances quickly.
#Sound booster at a concert portable
Infrared light test for SARS-CoV-2Īn international team of researchers, led by researchers from Monash University and the Peter Doherty Institute, has proposed a portable test that can detect SARS-CoV-2 from saliva using light. While the sample size is small and lacks an infection control group (comparing the results to influenza infection, for example), the authors suggest in their paper that supertasters may be more likely to be asymptomatic or uninfected carriers of SARS-CoV-2 because “their innate immune system, including sinonasal mucosal immunity, helps to prevent the systemic infection of the upper respiratory tract by pathogens”. Non-tasters were also more likely to be hospitalised once infected. Of the 266 people in the study who tested positive to COVID-19, 147 (55%) were non-tasters, 15 (5.6%) were supertasters, and 104 (39.1%) were tasters. Roughly a quarter of the sample were non-tasters, another quarter were supertasters and the remaining half were tasters. These people were monitored from July to September 2020.
The researchers, based in the US, identified 1935 staff and patients at a hospital as either supertasters, tasters or non-tasters based on phenotype testing. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images Supertasters are often sensitive to the flavour of coriander. Often a genetic trait, these people are very sensitive to bitter flavours and can be picky eaters compared to tasters or non-tasters.īut they might have an advantage against SARS-CoV-2: a study published in JAMA Network Open has found that supertasters were less likely to test positive to COVID-19.
“Supertasters” are people with a high number of T2R38 taste receptors in their mouths. In addition, people tend to be more verbal around their friends and quieter around strangers, so over time, loud sounds could remind us of lively events, and people who we are closer with.” Supertasters are more resilient to COVID
“We think it’s because lively and vibrant places tend to be louder than lifeless and barren ones.
“Sound reflects physical and social proximity with other people,” says Adam Wang, a researcher at James Cook University and lead author on the study. The study, involving 12 experiments with over 2000 people from Australia, Singapore, the UK and the USA, found that people who are socially excluded show a preference for higher volume sounds, like music or background noise, and that these sounds can also help mitigate feelings of loneliness. A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin has found that louder sounds could be a good way to deal with loneliness. The brain knows when we’re feeling lonelyĪs Melbourne goes into another seven days of lockdown, it’s likely that there will be more people feeling lonely and isolated this weekend.‘Loneliness epidemic’ set to become a health crisis.Experience of loneliness may change with age.
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