Over recent weeks, telecom technology company Nanoveu (ASX:NVU) has put itself among the cohort of ASX small-caps working on products linked to the COVID-19 health pandemic.

The company’s core tech offering is designed to enable people with far sightedness to read smartphones.

But in mid-April, it announced it was running tests to assess the effectiveness of an antiviral smartphone case and screen protector that had shown promising results against the coronavirus.

Those developments helped the company’s shares rise from crisis lows beneath 3c to more than 6c. This morning, Nanoveu had some positive results — its antimicrobial technology was “demonstrated to be effective against a coronavirus strain emerging from mice, which is a surrogate for human coronaviruses”.

Shares promptly surged by more than 200 per cent:

 

The testing was carried out on a strain of coronavirus called MHV-A59 that emerges from mice.

When a solution containing MVH-A59 was placed on a film containing Nanoveu’s antiviral technology, it was shown to eradicate 90 per cent of the infectious particles in 10 minutes.

The company explained that coronavirus strains had a “viral envelope” which protected the hosts cells, and its solution effectively worked to break down that envelope.

The independent analysis was carried out at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

Nanoveu CEO Alfred Chong has previously stated that a corona-proof phone case could be commercially viable, given that mobile phones were initially cited as a common medium for disease transfer.

According to Nanoveu, there are four types of coronavirus — Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma. The AVH-A59 solution is in the Beta group, which means it shares a common trait with a number of respiratory ailments including COVID-19, SARS and MERS.

“Given the similarity in both structure as well as genus variety of MHV-A59 to a wide number of pathogenic viruses, Nanoveu is highly encouraged by the results to date,” the company said.

“Additional testing is ongoing at a well-regarded laboratory in the United States and Nanoveu will provide an update as soon as results are available.”

Nanoveu said it also planned to test its technology against the OC43 strain of coronavirus, which is also in the Beta group and is known to infect human hosts.