Hello Greybeard the engineer.You may care to look at this...

Hello Greybeard the engineer.

You may care to look at this one:

Rapid PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 on GeneXperts: Clinician factsheet - Communities of practice (nsw.gov.au)

The Genexpert was purchased by NSWHP for rapid flu testing a few years ago but its not cheap to use. Cheap machine expensive consumables like the home printer model. The Genexpert has a panel of tests other than flu and by this note: covid. You will note it returns a result in under 60 minutes and the collection requires nasal viral swab.

The NSWHP molecular labs ( like a majority) have favoured Illumina equipment for the high throughput testing. This is the robot that can detect the morphing of virus into new strains. You may care to scan illumina to establish collection of sample protocols. I have no professed knowledge of the various types of nasal swabbing used here. I am aware NSWHP have been using Qiagen molecular equipment next to the rapid antigen screening. They also possess advanced Roche Cobas equiment. All these robots are amazing and underpin my earlier posts about the scientific dynamic.

Bottom line every one of these still uses nasal swab

Looking at industry strategic plans, the huge change is evolving from reactive sick care to predictive/preventative health care. With public plans the words are often prophetic but the follow up action is significantly harder to achieve; particularly, when you are required to resource a pandemic response. Noting a lot of money is sunk and subsequently made on reactive care, it also impedes take up of the technologies ( not just molecular but integrated with chemistry and micro). Tribal protection is also an impediment. My prediction is the nasal swab has a longer life expectancy than it may need.

I note my poor investment record and no scientific knowledge of pathology only its equipment.