The Coronavirus COVID-19 is posing major challenges for healthcare systems and medical institutions worldwide.

An ability to rapidly diagnose the virus is of invaluable help in curbing its exponential spread in many countries. Bosch’s new, fully automated rapid test for COVID-19 can help medical facilities such as doctors’ offices, hospitals, laboratories, and health centres make fast diagnoses.

The rapid molecular diagnostic test runs on the Vivalytic analysis device from Bosch Healthcare Solutions.

“We want the Bosch rapid COVID-19 test to play a part in containing the coronavirus pandemic as quickly as possible. It will speed up the identification and isolation of infected patients,” says Dr Volkmar Denner, chairman of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH.

Developed in just six weeks, the rapid test can detect a COVID-19 coronavirus infection in patients in under two and a half hours — measured from the time the sample is taken to the time the result arrives.

Another advantage of the rapid test is that it can be performed directly at the point of care. This eliminates the need to transport samples, which takes up valuable time.

It also means patients quickly gain certainty about their state of health, while allowing infected individuals to be identified and isolated immediately. With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait for one to two days for a result.

“Time is of the essence in the fight against coronavirus. Reliable, rapid diagnosis directly on-site with no back and forth — that is the great advantage of our solution, which we see as another example of technology that is ‘Invented for life,’” Denner says.

A British company behind a 10-minute coronavirus antibody test, which will cost about a $1, has begun sending prototypes to laboratories for validation, which could be a game-changer in the fight against the pandemic.

Health technology firm Mologic, which created one of the first at-home pregnancy tests, is aiming for the test to be rolled out by as early as June if the trials are successful.

Antibody tests are designed to establish whether people have previously been infected, as opposed to antigen tests which show if someone actually has the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus.

Mologic said assessment and validation of its COVID-19 diagnostic test had begun this week at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and St Georges hospital, and that global partners would also examine the prototypes.

Joe Fitchett, Mologic medical director, said that while many companies were working on virus diagnostics, the aim was to create cheap, widely available tests.

“They must be made available to the vulnerable and most precious in society, in the UK or elsewhere,” he told Reuters.

“I would be really disappointed to see a good test that is shown to work to be sold on Amazon only be used by a tiny proportion of the population.”

China and the United States should “unite to fight” the deadly coronavirus pandemic, President Xi Jinping said in a call with Donald Trump on Friday, as he called for the US to improve relations.

The two countries have clashed in recent weeks over the virus, and Chinese state media said Xi told Trump he hoped the “US will take substantive actions to improve Sino-US relations.”

He also called for the two countries to work together to tackle the virus and said Beijing “wishes to continue sharing all information and experience with the US”, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Trump sounded a positive tone, tweeting that he had a “very good conversation” with Xi and that both leaders discussed the pandemic “in great detail”.

“China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the virus. We are working closely together. Much respect,” he wrote.

Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo angered Beijing this month by repeatedly referring to “the Chinese virus” when discussing the COVID-19 outbreak first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Trump has since dropped the term amid accusations of racism, in another small sign of easing tensions between the two world powers.

Earlier this month a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing also suggested in a tweet that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan.

This prompted Trump to accuse China of spreading misinformation, and the US president repeatedly attacked China’s lack of transparency and the slowness of its initial response to the outbreak.

Xi said Sino-US relations were at a “critical juncture”, CCTV reported, adding that cooperation was mutually beneficial and “the only right choice.”

Friday’s call also took place as the US overtook China as the country with the most confirmed coronavirus cases — the pathogen has now infected more than 82,400 people in the world’s largest economy.

During the call, Xi said China had shared information about the epidemic with the World Health Organization and other countries including the US in a “timely” manner throughout.

“Infectious diseases are the common enemy of mankind, and do not recognise borders or races,” said Xi.

Some provinces, cities and companies in China have provided medical supplies and support to the US as well, Xi added.

At an emergency videoconference chaired by Saudi Arabia Thursday — which both Xi and Trump joined — G20 nations pledged a “united front” in the fight against the coronavirus.

The group said they would inject $5 trillion into the global economy to counter the pandemic amid forecasts of a deep recession.