New Singapore-developed test can detect whether a person has had COVID-19 in 1 hour
SINGAPORE — Singapore hospitals are now equipped with a unique COVID-19 test kit that can tell whether a person had been infected before with the coronavirus within an hour, instead of the usual several days.
The test kit can eventually be used for contact tracing, checking if potential vaccines work, and assessing the proportion of the population that are already infected.
It is jointly developed and manufactured by Duke-NUS Medical School, biotechnology firm GenScript Biotech and the Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub) at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star).
Rapidly detects neutralising antibodies in patients
In a media release on Friday (15 May), Duke-NUS said that the test kit – which uses a unique detection system known as the surrogate virus neutralisation test – is the first in the world that rapidly detects neutralising antibodies in the COVID-19 patients that are responsible for clearing the infection.
Other commercially-available test kits require complex laboratory procedures that not only need several days to obtain results, but are also generally less sensitive in detection of the antibodies.
The newly-developed test kit, on the other hand, can detect the antibodies without the need of live biological materials and bio-containment facilities. This means it can be rapidly conducted within an hour in most research or clinical laboratories.
Pilot batch for use in Singapore hospitals
The DxD Hub has validated the test kit and secured its provisional authorisation by the Health Sciences Authority. It will produce the pilot batch for use in Singapore hospitals, and there are plans for the know-how to be transferred to local biotech companies for scaled-up production.
“The test results will be of great help to governments in guiding the resumption of work, since it is extremely useful for quick and reliable surveillance to determine how widely a population has gained immunity to (COVID-19),” said Dr Li Zhu, GenScript’s chief strategy officer.
“Detection of neutralising antibodies determines who can more safely go back to work or to more social life.”
Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore
Related stories:
COVID-19: S'pore reports 793 more cases and new single-day high of 1,275 recoveries
COVID-19: No tests for any disease can be completely accurate – MOH official
'No doubt' construction costs will rise with COVID-19 testing for workers ramped up: Lawrence Wong
10% of construction workforce to resume in 'controlled manner' by June: BCA
