French hospital tests breathalyzer machine to detect coronavirus

A hospital in the southern French city of Lyon is experimenting on the patients with a new machine that lets them breathe into a tube to see if they have coronavirus. The result is found out in a matter of seconds.

According to the Reuters news agency, this test provides immediate results as compared to standard PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.

Director of research at the National Centre of Scientific Research at the la Croix-Rousse hospital Christian George told Reuters, “It’s the same principle as a classic breathalyzer test,”

“The machine will register the molecules in the exhaled air and then detects the traces of the sickness.”

Head of the intensive care at the hospital Jean-Christophe Richard said that the purpose was to make the machine fully operational by the end of the year.

He said, “This type of quick test means we will have the results straight away and can then move the patient to the right area of the hospital. As we now have a few efficient treatments, the quicker we can diagnose the quicker we can treat them,”

Bruno Lina, an independent virus expert who has been studying on the machine, said that step has been taken in the right direction. But it was too expensive at this stage for distribution in hospitals on a large scale.

“If our hypothesis is proved correct we could see second or third-generation machines that cost less and that would specifically home in on the markers of the infection that we have identified,”