A senior delegation from Israel’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development will travel to New Delhi in the coming weeks to develop new and rapid coronavirus tests in cooperation with their Indian counterparts, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday. The delegation plans to test four different technologies for detecting coronavirus: sound waves, breathalyzers based on terahertz waves, isothermic identification and checking polyamino acids.

The Israeli and Indian scientists will carry out 4,000 to 5,000 tests of each technology in India to determine if they can work. The Israeli team will also bring aid packages to India on the flight, including sanitising and disinfection equipment to protect medical staff, along with ventilators, which received special authorization to be sent out of Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The Israeli delegation will work out of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi. The project is led by Dani Gold, head of Israel’s Directorate of Defence Research and Development, and K Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gold said the Israeli team would be in India for about a week and a half.

“The first phase of testing of these technologies was done in Israel,” Israel’s ambassador to India, Ron Malkin, told the Hindustan Times. “The last stage will now be carried out in India...The funding, logistics, cooperation and results are mutual.”

The new technologies are meant to allow for rapid coronavirus testing, in some cases in a matter of minutes. One of the them is a new Covid test that uses polyamino acids to produce a result in 30 minutes, Gold explained. “This will mean you can be tested as you enter an airport, a mall or anywhere and be cleared. Real-time testing would allow the economy to open again.”

A second, inexpensive biochemical test can be used at home and gives a result in 30 minutes. The third technology uses artificial intelligence to listen to a person’s voice and determine if he or she has first stage Covid. “It plays on the fact Covid attacks the respiratory system,” Gold said. “One could even do the diagnosis through a cell phone.”

The fourth method is a breath analyser. “One would breathe into a tube...We put the tube into a machine which uses terahertz radio frequencies and an algorithm to tell if you have the virus,” Gold explained. “India is an AI superpower. With these tests, hopefully we will be able to mature the technology and deploy it across the board.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said the cooperation with India has great importance and this operation “sends a message of friendship and solidarity and is an opportunity for unique scientific and technological cooperation that can help Israel, India and the whole world”.

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