New testing devices that can diagnose coronavirus within 90 minutes are being used for the first time at a hospital in Cambridge.

The portable machines, called Samba II, have been developed by a University of Cambridge spin-off company called Diagnostics for the Real World, and 10 are being used at Addenbrooke’s Hospital this week.

The researchers said their tests have been validated by Public Health England and the devices are expected to be launched in hospitals across the country.

They said the Samba machine is ‘extremely sensitive’ when it comes to detecting active infections, saying 98.7% of people with the disease will be correctly identified as positive cases.

Helen Lee, chief executive of Diagnostics for the Real World, said: “Our goal has always been to make cutting-edge technology so simple and robust that the Samba machine can be placed literally anywhere and operated by anyone with minimum training.”

Once nasal and throat swabs have been collected from patients, the samples will be loaded into the machines, which look for tiny traces of genetic material belonging to the coronavirus.

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Samba can deliver a diagnosis in less than 90 minutes while current tests can take 24 hours or longer, the researchers said.

Tests in 102 patient samples were shown to have 98.7% sensitivity (ability to correctly identify positive cases) and 100% specificity (the ability to correctly identify negative cases) compared with the current NHS test.

The machines will be used by healthcare workers as well as other patients suspected of having Covid-19 across the country.

Businessman and philanthropist Sir Chris Hohn is helping make the test more widely available with a $3 million (£2.3 million) donation which will enable the purchase of 100 machines.

A further 569 people have died in the UK due to coronavirus, taking the total number to 2,921.

A total of 33,718 people have now tested positive for the virus.

The Government has faced increased pressure to increase its testing, particularly with Germany already carrying out around 500,000 tests a week.

Chris Hopson, chief executive at NHS Providers, has claimed that one NHS trust can test only three members of staff per day due to a lack of swabs.

‘The key thing to understand is it’s the swabs and the reagent shortages that is the problem,’ he told BBC Radio 4.

‘I was talking to the largest trust, one of the largest trusts in the country this morning, who basically want to test many, many hundreds of their staff but they actually can’t because they’ve got a reagent shortage.

‘So all we’re saying is that trusts will go as fast as they can, but unless we can solve those swab and reagent shortages then there will be a natural capacity limit to how many tests we can do.’

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