The Netherlands has come up with a less invasive method to test people for the coronavirus. Dutch health officials said that they will begin to roll out their new coronavirus breath tests as soon as this week.

Testing facilities in Amsterdam will reportedly begin using the new devices - called the SprioNose - to test people for the virus. According to health officials, the device works similarly to a breath test used to detect alcohol levels.

To use the machine, patients will only need to breathe into the machine. Officials said that the device can confirm if the patient is infected with the coronavirus "within minutes."

"That's a game-changer if you can make a rapid diagnosis or rule out infection within a minute," Marc Van Rans, a biologist from Belgium, said.

Mariken van der Lubben, an infectious disease expert working at the country's municipal health services, said that the device is reliable in detecting the presence of the virus or lack thereof.

"If you are negatively tested, then it's a very reliable outcome and you can go," Van der Lubben said.

Officials said that the new rapid method should speed up COVID-19 testing across the nation. However, it was clarified that those that do test positive using the machine will need to be tested again using a traditional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

SpiroNose was invented by a Dutch health technology company called Breathomix. The company originally worked on a device that was able to detect asthma and lung cancer. After the pandemic hit, the company shifted its focus to enable the machine to detect the coronavirus strain.

The company did not go into detail about how exactly the device is able to detect the virus but it did say they had used the machine on thousands of patients infected with the coronavirus.

The developers of the machine said that they will begin comparing test results using the PCR method and the new breath test to get a better understanding of its efficacy. Experts said if the machine is proven to be effective in detecting the virus and its different strains, it could become the "future" of testing for COVID-19 infections.

Dutch officials have reportedly made an order for 1,800 units of the breath testing machines, which they plan to distribute throughout the country's various testing facilities.