Hong Kong firm races to develop chikungunya fever test for early detection

Hong Kong is developing a rapid test for chikungunya fever that could detect the disease at an earlier stage, as part of the city’s efforts to harness technology to combat the public health risk.

Ricky Chiu Yin-to, founder and CEO of biotechnology company Phase Scientific, said on Monday that his team was working to develop a rapid blood test that could yield results in 10 to 15 minutes by finger pricking.

The test being developed in Hong Kong aims to detect the antigen, specific proteins on the surface of the chikungunya virus, instead of looking for antibodies produced by the body – an approach adopted by many other rapid tests in the world.

“When you are at the stage of acute infection, the test could identify chikungunya virus from your blood, instead of looking into a more secondary immune response of your body,” Chiu said.

The existing rapid test kits for chikungunya fever available in the market, produced by companies including those from the United States and mainland China, look for the virus antibodies that are produced at a later stage of infection.

But Chiu said there could be shortcomings with test kits looking for antibodies.