Riken, Kanagawa Pref create test to detect coronavirus in 30 minutes

Kanagawa Prefecture and government-backed research institute Riken said Thursday they have developed a testing method that can detect the new coronavirus in 30 minutes, far shorter than the six hours required with current tests.

And how is it that in South Korea they can do a test, in their "drive through" testing locations, that have results in about 10 minutes?

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/south-korea-drive-through-coronavirus-test-facilities-12477046

Seems to me that countries around the world MUST openly share research information here!

So now that Japan can supposedly cut the test results times from 6 hours to 30 minutes will they be able to test more than 1000 people every two weeks? It seems that South Korea was able to test 50,000+ in under a week. Or would finding so many new cases seriously damage the possibility of holding the Olympics?

In the end what will keep people away from visiting Japan or the Olympics is mere fear. How do we overcome this? Having Dear Leader smile and say everything is under control will not be enough. Openness is all important, along with a heavy dose of truthfulness.

And how is it that in South Korea they can do a test, in their "drive through" testing locations, that have results in about 10 minutes?

That may have to do with reliability or even price, maybe they consider a low specificity or sensitivity test just "good enough" if they can do the test on 10 minutes, it appears good on principle but even a test 85% specific is considered worse than doing nothing for testing the general population.

Seems to me that countries around the world MUST openly share research information here!

In infectious diseases this is the norm, Japan China and Korea have very close relationships in this kind of research so it would not be surprising that everything is already shared, not being open to the general population is not the same as not being shared between researcher.

So now that Japan can supposedly cut the test results times from 6 hours to 30 minutes will they be able to test more than 1000 people every two weeks?

The bottleneck is not the time for each test but where it can be done, Japanese regulations are extremely strict compared with other countries because every time a university or research institute wants to open a facility to deal with emerging diseases properly the public reacts with horror saying that it is not necessary and that Japan can just buy tests from overseas etc. Relaxing the rules would multiply the number of tests that can be done a huge lot, but realistically speaking there is no chance of that happening.

Not sure if anyone should trust a "super quick" test from Riken.... they have been caught producing fakes before

The test is not really super-science, just applying known technologies (likely loop-mediated isothermal amplification) to this particular virus. It is also terribly simple to do test runs in any place with LAMP machines to corroborate specificity and sensibility. One thing is for one scientist to publish fake results about something difficult to replicate (something that happens in all places where research is done) another completely different is to announce something that takes a day or two to prove fake by any minimally prepared laboratory.

Or would finding so many new cases seriously damage the possibility of holding the Olympics?

Probably not, but who knows, as odds are this virus will die out over the course of the next month or two, if proper precautions are taken by the public and government to stop it's spread.

Knee jerk reactions are not going to help, and only cause more anxiety and panic among the population.

Most important in my opinion, is the government MUST provide accurate and timely information to the public and refrain from over reacting! Showing restraint and stability and more importantly leadership!

Not sure if anyone should trust a "super quick" test from Riken.... they have been caught producing fakes before

It is good news but when will these tests be adopted? What would be better is having a kit that is sold in convenience stores for public use.

Other countries had head start when they saw China struggling. Hopefully Japanese companies will come through to bailout the government

Alex, then you shouldn't trust any drugs from Merck; or from Novartis; or from most of the other big companies, which had scandals and problems with their research results.

And I hope you are not using calculators and computers based on Unix systems, developed at Bell Labs where the biggest fraud in physics took place (Schon).

And if we are at it, I hope you don't believe in gravity, because Newton is known to fake some of his research data; nor in genes, since most of Mendel results were doctored, or God-forbid evolution theory, "borrowed" by Darwin.

By the way, you should probably throw away your 1000 bills, most of the research of Hideyo Noguchi could never be reproduced...

All of which have nothing to do with science breakthroughs, which come and sometimes go, with small or big imperfections, and stay only upon the test of time and of the scientific community.

Test is o.k. How abt cutre ???.

Cure first. Machines ???.

As expected my Kanagawa. well done.

And when introducing Kanagawa, it is rude to introduce it to the suburbs of Tokyo.

Kanagawa is Kanagawa