With the Delta variant wreaking havoc on unvaccinated populations and COVID-19 cases spiking around the world, the pandemic is far from over. Despite the impressively fast development of SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests over the last year and a half, the vast majority of patient samples must still be sent to a lab for processing, which slows down the pace of COVID-19 case tracking. If a sample is to be tested for a specific variant of the virus, it must be genetically sequenced, which takes even more time and resources.