A team of researchers in the US and China has devised a severity scoring system for Covid-19 by looking at the biomarkers present in blood. The system combines biomarker measurements with risk factors such as age and gender in a statistical learning algorithm to predict the likelihood of a Covid-19 patient dying from the disease. It is the first quantitative point-of-care diagnostic tool to predict the severity of the disease in individual patients.
The system can detect several biomarkers from a single blood sample without needing to be sent away to a laboratory. Each test runs in a single-use microfluidic cartridge placed within a biosensor platform, which generates immunofluorescent signals that correlate to antigen concentrations.