Pentagon medical researchers have created a microchip that will detect COVID-19 when inserted under the skin.
Relax, conspiracy theorists: they are not spread by vaccines.
The revolutionary technology was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which operates under the Pentagon umbrella, according to the “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday night. The top-secret unit was launched during the Cold War to study emerging technologies for military use, including innovations to defend soldiers from biological weapons.
Retired Army Colonel Dr. Matt Hepburn, an infectious disease physician, revealed that the microchip, which is not generally used outside of the Department of Defense, could detect COVID-19 in an individual well before a patient zero generated an outbreak.
“We challenge the research community to find solutions that may seem like science fiction,” said Hepburn, whose role at DARPA, he added, is to “get pandemics off the table.”
Hepburn compared his diagnostic microchip to a car’s “control engine” alert.
Despite conspiracy theories that Microsoft’s Bill Gates uses vaccines as a vehicle to insert a microscopic global positioning system into our bodies, “60 Minutes” clarified that the DARPA chip would not “track all its movements.” “. Nor is it administered by shooting, as some possible Twitter detectors have reflected.
“It’s a sensor,” Hepburn told CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker. “That little green thing that’s inside, you put it under your skin and what it tells you is that there are chemical reactions going on inside your body and that the signal means you’ll have symptoms tomorrow.”
The microchip, embedded in a tissue-like gel, is designed to continuously test for the presence of the virus in the blood of the chip recipient. Once COVID-19 is detected, the chip alerts the patient to perform a rapid blood test, which can be self-administered, to confirm the positive result.
“We can have that information in three or five minutes,” Hepburn said. “As you truncate that time, as you diagnose and treat it, what you do is stop the infection.”
The segment also revealed technology that would allow a standard dialysis machine to remove COVID-19 from the blood using a custom filter. The blood is passed through the machine, where it is detoxified, and then pumped back into the body in a continuous flow until the body detaches itself from the virus.
A military spouse baptized as “patient 16” survived a severe attack of the disease, including organic failure and septic shock, thanks to the new dialysis machine. The treatment lasted four days, after which patient 16 had fully recovered.
DARPA scientists say their research is critical to preventing outbreaks in crowded military neighborhoods, such as the one at the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March and April 2020, which left 1,271 comrades the crew tested positive for coronavirus.
Pentagon researchers continue to study COVID-19, and much of their research has been instrumental in stopping the pandemic, including new methods of detecting and developing antibodies in about ten weeks, a fraction of the six to 24 months previously required.
Finally, they hope to close the gap between the detection of new diseases and the development of vaccines.
Finally, said DARPA scientist Dr. James Crowe, “we would start from a blood sample from a survivor … and give you an injection of the cure within 60 days.”
“For us at DARPA, if the experts laugh at you and say it’s impossible, you’re in the right space,” Hepburn said.