GUILFORD, Conn. — Guilford based, a world-renowned scientist and engineer, Jonathan Rothberg, spent his quarantine developing an at-home Covid test kit in the lab aboard his superyacht.
The “Detect” kit is currently in clinical trials preparing data for FDA approval and Rothberg says soon- he hopes it will be ready for the public at large.
His work started back in March when his doctor wife was working nights at Yale and he was concerned about his daughter who is at a higher risk for COVID due to medication. He says he felt he needed to do his part. Cut to today, 9 months later— Rothberg and a team of more than 100 engineers and scientists, many from Yale and UConn have developed, fundraised, and mass-produced “Detect.”
Rothberg says, “ I decided to develop a home test kit that would be as sensitive and accurate as the gold standard clinical laboratory test but you would be able to do it in the comfort of your own home. “
At a $35 price point, the kit includes a swab and a vile. It’s then inserted into a base station and reader. His whole family has been using the technology- with roommates, and over the holidays with family.
Rothberg says, “ we are working diligently to make sure you have these tests to keep your family safe because I’ve been lucky to be able to keep my family safe through frequent testing. We are working with the FDA for approval in the next few weeks. We raised $80 million to scale up making millions of these a month in the first quarter.”
The plan is to get the test kits into places where you need to know right away if someone is infected or not. Think doctor’s offices, schools, assisted living communities, and homes.
Rothberg has raised over $1 billion to create seven companies here in Connecticut four of them are currently working on technologies to combat covid.
The detect lab is based in Guilford and Rothberg says that the community was intra-goal in creating the test kit, providing the data for potential FDA approval.
He says, “ over 1500 people mostly from Guilford including first responders have gone to our location and tried our test and allowed us to watch them use our tests so we could learn how to make it better for everybody else.“