4 ms·
I thought the WHO kits are being used in mass in South Korea and Italy. Is the U.S. really developing something unique?
by bradly 7y ago
I thought the WHO kits are being used in mass in South Korea and Italy. Is the U.S. really developing something unique?
- tic_tac 7y agoAt least one company in South Korea, Seegene, has produced many tests and it is this aggressive private sector production that is largely reasonable for South Korea's effective testing. There is also a large demand for Seegene's tests around the world indicating that WHO tests are definitely not in sufficient supply. The private sector stepping in is the best way to get enough tests out to everyone who needs them. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-testing-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-...
- robocat 7y ago4 SK companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22572121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22572121 See rest of that thread for background - maybe Seegene is doing better PR?
- dba7dba 7y agoI read about 80% of the tests in S. Korea are done with Seegene test kits.
- sanxiyn 7y agoThis is March 1st press conference from South Korea: https://news.v.daum.net/v/20200301162614985 https://news.v.daum.net/v/20200301162614985. It says Seegene accounts for 37.8% of test volume. The context is that Seegene (and only Seegene, other companies have other supply chains) had supply chain problem. As I understand problem is now resolved.
- kube-system 7y agoIt is different than the test currently being used in the US, at least. It is going to speed up testing rates. See: https://youtu.be/q_WM_pMp0Hg?t=7382 https://youtu.be/q_WM_pMp0Hg?t=7382
- WanderPanda 7y agoI have no clue about this, but to me it seems they just took the existing human workflow and built a robot to replicate it. Is there no more clean slate way of doing this (maybe with a lot of pipes like in a refinery?). How does one even keep one of those monsters clean?
- ak217 7y agoThere are many RT-PCR LDTs. It does not take very much to create a real-time RT-PCR LDT for COVID-19; two weeks ago the CDC posted a comprehensive description of the process on their website, but it was not a secret before then. All you need is a clinical-grade RT-PCR machine, synthesized primer/probe DNA (which many labs are equipped to do), and quality reagents. The difference here is that the Roche instrument is pre-approved for clinical use both (1) in the US and (2) outside "high complexity" CLIA labs; the instrument is already widely deployed to hospital labs; and the instrument is highly automated compared to the basic 96-well RT-PCR machine, with a robotic stage that allows it to run thousands of samples per day with less manual work. The WHO does not have a massive stockpile of complete test kits, and to my knowledge the countries that have scaled up testing are not relying on the WHO for anything but information. Any kits the WHO provides would need to run on an existing RT-PCR machine anyway.
- bewaretheirs 7y agoCDC's test instructions and (more importantly) the target RNA/DNA sequences were posted more like 6 weeks ago -- I think I first noticed them in early February, around the time CDC announced that they had applied for an emergency use waiver from the FDA. They've been revised considerably since then (with a big "research use only" warning on them added).
- ak217 7y agoTheir protocol for clinical labs is a superset of the research protocol. (Clinical labs also have extensive prior experience in this kind of protocol, and many state DPH and other labs are in continuous touch with the CDC through CDC's lab network.)