The Synevo medical laboratory plans to launch innovative rapid tests for detecting the COVID-19 antigen declared by WHO in Ukraine in the coming weeks.
Mykola Butenko, the director of development at Synevo, told Interfax-Ukraine that at present, the company has brought an experimental batch of Austrian-made tests to Ukraine and is finishing their “internal” testing.
“Next week, we are already waiting for the delivery of these tests to launch testing for customers. The first delivery will be about 8,000 systems. If necessary, the manufacturer is ready to fully cover the needs of our network for these test systems, so tests will be performed across the entire Synevo network in Ukraine,” he said.
According to Butenko, the test manufacturer is a well-known Austrian company that specializes in the production of rapid tests for laboratory diagnostics. The test systems have passed clinical trials and are certified according to international standards.
“The huge advantage of these rapid tests is that their sensitivity is 97%, and the result will be ready in 15-30 minutes. Therefore, the use of such test systems for the COVID-19 antigen allows mass screening testing in a short time, which is very valuable in the conditions of uncontrolled growth of the epidemic,” he added.
The cost of the declared express tests for COVID-19 antigen in the Synevo network is about UAH 800.
Synevo, part of Sweden’s Medicover holding, has handed over the COVID-19 diagnostic equipment using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests – the most reliable method for diagnosing this coronavirus disease, to the Public Health Center, Synevo Development Director Mykola Butenko said at a video press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
The equipment made by Swiss Roche will allow increasing the speed and the number of COVID-19 tests and will significantly increase the accuracy of test results, removing human element from the process.
The analyzer’s capacities are 96 tests per hour. Different types of biomaterial (blood, saliva, cerebrospinal fluid and others) can be tested.
The equipment has already been delivered by Synevo to the virology reference laboratory of the Public Health Center in Kyiv, which will perform COVID-19 testing.
“In Ukraine, because of the high cost of equipment, this initial stage is usually tested manually by laboratory staff. This limits the speed and number of tests performed. Using the new analyzer will minimize the human factor. As a result, we will significantly increase the number of tests performed and eliminate the risk of human error,” Butenko said.
The use of new equipment will increase the safety of the laboratory staff, since the apparatus performs the process of RNA extraction from the biomaterial automatically, therefore, the laboratory staff will no longer have to contact samples of potentially infected biomaterial.
To launch the analyzer, representatives of Roche Diagnostics in Ukraine will be involved in the startup of the equipment, as well as in special training for employees of the Public Health Center’s laboratory how to use the equipment.
The PCR method directly detects DNA or virus RNA in the biomaterial, therefore this method is the most reliable in the world for the diagnosis of COVID-19.
