Jing Wang spent the last few years developing a sensor that measures airborne germs. So when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he figured he could tweak it to detect the new coronavirus.
The sensor could be useful in crowded areas like hospitals, train stations or classrooms, said Wang, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute of Environmental Engineering in Zurich. Still under development, the device is sensitive enough to tell the difference between the new pathogen and the related SARS virus that swept through the world in 2003.