China company develops 15 minutes coronavirus test strip
- Coronavirus can now be diagnosed within 15 minutes
- This is as a result of a test kit developed in China
- Meanwhile, experts have not commented on the development of the test strip
A company in China has reportedly developed a test strip that can detect the presence of the novel coronavirus in the body within 15 minutes.
This was disclosed in a short video clip shared on Twitter by China Xinhua News.
The company credited with developing the test strip is reported to be based in Hefei, China.
Though the test strip has not been publicly acknowledged by medical experts, the knowledge of the existence of such test strip is a welcome development as the world continues to grapple with the rampaging virus.
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an “emergency use authorisation” to the test, which runs on Roche’s cobas 6800/8800 systems.
Legit.ng gathered that Roche said the tool also is available in Europe and countries that accept its CE marking for medical devices.
The 8800 version is capable of testing 4,128 patients a day, and the 6,800 can test as many as 1,440, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said.
The report also noted that Roche shares climbed as much as 4.9% early Friday, March 13, leading the Stoxx Europe 600 index.
“We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10,” Thomas Schinecker, head of Roche’s diagnostics unit, said in an interview.
"Testing is crucial to stem the spread of Covid-19 because it allows health care workers to identify the infected and quarantine them, even if they’re not experiencing any symptoms. That can potentially reduce the overall number of infections and buy time for drugmakers to come up with better treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine.
"This is the third test and first commercially available one granted emergency approval by the FDA. The agency in February cleared diagnostic tools brought forth by the CDC and the New York State Department of Public Health," the statement read.
It was gathered that the US and much of Europe have been criticised for testing their populations too slowly, allowing the virus to proliferate.
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Roche’s cobas systems, launched in 2014, are widely available globally, with 695 of the 6800 instruments and 132 of the 8800 systems already installed.
There are 110 of these tools in the US and Roche has installed a “significant amount” of new ones in key locations in the US in recent weeks, Schinecker said.
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Source: Legit.ng
