Almost a Killer App

Krystal Pollitt

The Yale School of Public Health has developed a wearable "Fresh Air Clip" that can detect low concentrations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: [bold added]

“The Fresh Air Clip is a wearable device that can be used to assess exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in the air,” said the clip’s creator Krystal Godri Pollitt, an assistant professor of epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences) at YSPH and an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale.

“With this clip we can detect low levels of virus that are well below the estimated SARS-CoV-2 infectious dose,” Godri Pollitt said. “The Fresh Air clip serves to identify exposure events early, alerting people to get tested or quarantine. The clip is intended to help prevent viral spread, which can occur when people do not have this kind of early detection of exposure.”

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted through the inhalation of virus-laden aerosols and respiratory droplets that infected individuals expel by coughing, sneezing, speaking or breathing. Researchers have used active air sampling devices to detect airborne SARS-CoV-2 in indoor settings; however, these monitors are typically large, expensive, non-portable, and require electricity. To better understand personal exposures to the virus, Godri Pollitt and her colleagues sought to develop a small, lightweight, inexpensive, and wearable device that doesn’t require a power source. The Fresh Air Clip was the result.

The device captures virus-laden aerosols that deposit on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surface. The team tested the air sampler in a rotating drum in which they generated aerosols containing a surrogate virus, a bacteriophage with similar properties to SARS-CoV-2. They detected virus on the PDMS sampler using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol, showing that the device could be used to reliably estimate airborne virus concentrations...

Godri Pollitt said she hopes to make the clips available to the public in the future.

The device has been tested in the field and appears to be reliable.

If it has the features that have been reported--small, lightweight, inexpensive--then the device is a significant weapon against viral transmission. The Clip has to be tested for virus aerosols in "a rotating drum" after possible exposure, so it falls just shy of being a world-changing breakthrough. However, now that we know what the objective is, I am sure that speedy, inexpensive Clip-testing mechanisms are on the drawing board.

Meanwhile, companies that are trying to develop wearable health-related technology should take note: blood-pressure and oxygen content are one thing, but detecting coronavirus in the air will be a killer app.