Turkish doctor develops urine kit to detect Covid-19 in 15 seconds

Turkish physical therapy and rehabilitation specialist has developed a urine kit to detect the novel coronavirus in 15 seconds.

Dr Mehmet Serhan Kurtulmus said he developed the kit in which a special reactant is used to detect parts specific to the virus that causes Covid-19.

Kurtulmus said he started work on the kit in March, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Turkey, and finished in November.

He said the kit was approved by several local medical institutions and had been licensed by the country's Health Ministry.

Emphasising that the kit's accuracy was found to be higher than existing ones, Kurtulmus said the study was published in an international clinical journal.

"Our purpose in making this test is to ensure that people are scanned for Covid-19 in the fastest and most accurate way," he said, adding that the kit was the first urine test kit capable of detecting the virus.

Turkey on Friday reported 12,203 more infections and 212 new fatalities from the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours. The tally of infections exceeded 2.22 million, while the death toll climbed to 21,093 in the country.