Russia to launch mass production of COVID-19 test systems

Russia to launch mass production of COVID-19 test systems
# 23 March 2020 18:32 (UTC +04:00)

The Russian Health Ministry’s Center for Strategic Planning and Management of Medical and Biological Health Risks will launch mass production of a new COVID-19 test system next week, the Russian Health Ministry’s press service informed on Monday, APA reports citing TASS.

"The Russian Health Ministry’s Center for Strategic Planning and Management of Medical and Biological Health Risks will launch the serial production of test systems aimed to detect the RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus of a severe acute respiratory infection (COVID-19) through a polymer chain reaction "AmpliTest SARS-CoV-2," the message informs.

Head of the center Sergei Yudin informed, quoted by the ministry’s press service, that the new test system will be more sensitive than the existing ones. Russia plans to produce up to 50,000 test systems a day.

The creation of the test system began on January 31, 2020, on the instructions of Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko. On March 6, it was approved by the Russian Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare.

A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of 12 million, in late December 2019. Cases of the new coronavirus have also been reported in more than 150 countries and territories, among them Russia, which by now has documented 438 cases. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the novel coronavirus cases across the globe have exceeded 320,000, with more than 14,000 deaths. WHO has officially described the situation with the novel coronavirus as a pandemic.

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