Irene Bosch
(Photo : Pinterest)

Irene Bosch is a Venezuelan and a biology graduate from the Central University of Venezuela and the founder and executive director of E25Bio.

One of the main concerns of countries that have confirmed cases of COVID-19 all over the world is the early detection or diagnosis of the virus. Rapid tests will give them the accurate number of cases and immediate responses to suppress and flatten the curve by implementing lockdown and isolation.

WHO IS IRENE BOSCH? AND HOW HER INVENTION WORKS?

Irene Bosch is a Venezuelan scientist and is the founder and present Executive Director of E25Bio. She has been at the forefront of developing the so-called Point of Care COVID-2 test. 

According to Bosch, this test is almost similar to pregnancy which can give the result within 15 minutes. She also said: "The sample comes into contact with gold salts and around these salts is a specific antibody that allows the detection of the Covid-19 viral proteins."  

Her invention is very potential in detecting the virus immediately that will help different countries around the world that have swelling cases of COVID-19 to diagnose and put into a quaratine the potential patient.

In the recently published article, the tool works easily. if a red line will mark on a special paper the same as how a pregnancy test works, then that person is positive for COVID-19.  

IS POINT OF CARE COVID-2 TEST IMPORTANT?

There are many pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and scientists who have been working in developing vaccines that will help cure patients with COVID-19. However, there are only few of them that are developing testing kits that will detect infected persons at an early stage.

This means that vaccines that will be tested in the coming days will be useless if there will be no enough testing kits that will detect patients who are potentially carrying the virus. The logic here is while pharmaceutical companies are developing vaccines, the number of undetected cases is also increasing due to the lack of testing kits that will give the immediate result and will help to isolate patients.

Private and Public health sectors are very busy developing or creating a vaccine rather than developing a test for early diagnosis of the virus. 

The tool invented by the Latina scientist is very important because this will somehow help to flatten the curve by detecting patients at an early stage and will help to stop the spread of the virus. 

Moreover, these types of tests have been proven to be effective in preventing epidemics like dengue, zika, or chikingunya. This means that the Point of Care COVID-2 test has the potential to diagnose patients.

The tool is right now on its validation stage and once it is proven to be efficient, it will be produced in large quantities and will be made for sale around the world.

This is not the first time that a Latina is recognized for her contribution amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In the recently published article of Latin Post, it was found out that a hand sanitizer was invented by a Latina in 1960 which becomes now a basic commodity to keep a person protected against the infectious and deadly virus.

It is not a surprise anymore why many Latinas excel in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Their brilliance and inventions have helped a lot in this time of global health crisis.

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