Optical sensor for rapid on site diagnosis of Covid-19

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Rapid point of care detection is essential for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. Optics offer unique advantages compared to other alternatives to achieve this target including high sensitivity, small device size and real time, label free detection. Portable optical sensors proposed so far rely on developing fully packaged optical chips. Although these devices can be very compact, the complicated optical light coupling mechanism required in and out coupling of light results makes these devices very expensive for large scale deployment. The proposed research aims at developing a new optical sensor technology for detection of SAR-COV-2 virus in saliva. The sensor will be very compact, and instead of using complicated light coupling schemes, it will use commercially available low-cost laser diode and photodetectors. Availability of such a sensor will greatly enhance Canadian capability of monitoring and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic.