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Windsor’s Audacia Bioscience applied Monday to Health Canada for approval of a quick COVID-19 test that could provide a major boost in the battle to end the pandemic.

The test would provide users with results within 10 minutes.

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“It’s done with a test kit the looks like one of those home pregnancy kits,” said Dr. Stephen Bartol, an orthopaedic surgeon who co-founded Audacia Bioscience with Phillip Olla.

“It’s a small plastic cassette and you put a couple of blood drops in a well and mix it with a solution. In five minutes you’ll know if you’re positive and we say wait 10 minutes to ensure you’re negative.”

Audacia Bioscience will apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the test’s approval this week.

We expect we should have approvals in a week to two weeks

In the meantime, the kits are being used to test health-care workers at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital as part of the clinical trials being conducted on various drugs to combat COVID-19.

Photo by Nick Brancaccio / Windsor Star

“The FDA has indicated they will give us a same-day response,” said Bartol, the former chief of medicine for innovation in the Henry Ford Health System.