Exclusive | Prenetics buys Oxsed RaViD’s rapid coronavirus diagnostics technology to slash screening time to a fraction of current tests
- Oxsed RaViD throat and nose swabs reportedly deliver accurate test results within 15 to 30 minutes and are already in use at London’s Heathrow airport
- That test is much faster than current PCR tests at Hong Kong’s airport, which require travellers to wait up to eight hours, or even overnight, for results
Prenetics said it had bought exclusive rights to technology that can cut the diagnostics time for Covid-19 tests to a fraction of the time of RT-PCR tests used at Hong Kong’s airport, in an acquisition that could make cross-border travel safer and speed the creation of travel bubbles.
The Hong Kong-based start-up has acquired the Oxsed RaViD test technology developed by University of Oxford scientists to screen for Covid-19 infections, according to Danny Yeung, co-founder and chief executive of Prenetics.
“This is a game-changer, and we aim to make the technology available to millions of people globally,” Yeung said, declining to provide financial details of the acquisition.
The acquisition comes ahead of the world’s first so-called travel bubble in November, where passengers who test negative for the coronavirus are allowed to travel between Hong Kong and Singapore without having to undergo quarantines when they arrive. Hong Kong’s government is seeking to create similar travel bubbles with 10 other destinations: Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand and Vietnam.