Hong Kong and Shenzhen firms join global effort to meet demand for coronavirus test kits
- Huge demand for extraction kits, ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 units a day, Hong Kong-based PSI says
- Shenzhen-based BGI Genomics is rapidly expanding exports to meet demand
As demand for Covid-19 test kits surges globally, three diagnostic companies in Hong Kong and neighbouring Shenzhen sprang into action to help contain the worst public health crisis in a generation.
“We are seeing huge demand for our extraction kits, with order requests in the range of 10,000 to 100,000 units a day,” Ricky Chiu Yin-to, the chairman of Hong Kong-based Phase Scientific International, said in an interview. “We will be delivering [the kits] in the next couple of weeks.”
The company last week launched a kit used by laboratories to extract RNA genetic materials from nasopharyngeal swaps for tests to determine if someone is infected by the novel coronavirus, which causes Covid-19.
The company, which also has an office in California where it was founded in 2015, has taken orders mainly from hospitals, governments universities and commercial laboratories in North and South America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
PSI’s scientists in Hong Kong, Suzhou in mainland China and California have worked round the clock over three weeks to develop the extraction kit, which Chiu said could allow labs to input 10 to 50 times more RNA materials specific to the virus than the current golden standard method.
