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The influenza virus spreads when people with the flu cough, sneeze or talk. Infected people transfer tiny droplets to people close to them and infect them by the handover of droplets. During an outbreak, it is important to be able to control and prevent the virus from spreading further, for example, by implementing control measures. Those control measures can be determined based on the reproduction number. The reproduction number is defined as: “the expected number of secondary cases produced by a single infection in a completely susceptible population”.<ref name="Arti16">Notes on R0, 2007, James Holland Jones, https://web.stanford.edu/~jhj1/teachingdocs/Jones-on-R0.pdfe</ref> A clear overview of the number of infected people is needed to calculate the reproduction number.
For disease control, it is crucial to know the infection rate in a specific region. The results may influence critical decisions such as whether to perform other diagnostic testing or to implement infection prevention and control measures for influenza (Overview of Influenza testing methods 2020). Furthermore, manpower can be in short supply during a pandemic and the speed at which someone can be tested and receive the result is of vital importance.
Biosensors that will be developed in SensUs 2021 are envisioned to be used outside the hospital in a point-of-care (POC) setting. Inside the hospital there is not a big advantage, as there are already very specific and accurate tests available for that setting.<ref name="Arti28">Diagnosing Flu, CDC, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/testing.htm</ref><ref name="Arti29">Information on Rapid Molecular Assays, RT-PCR, and other Molecular Assays for Diagnosis of Influenza Virus Infection, CDC, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/diagnosis/molecular-assays.htm</ref> Important applications are fast testing at the GP and at home. Therefore the test should be easy to use. The biosensors will be designed to enable a fast yes/no answer, based on measuring the concentration of viral particles in the sample. The biosensors will not distinguish between different virus subtypes, as the subtype causing the pandemic is assumed to be known.
