Vital reagent for up to 900,000 Covid-19 tests has been secured by the HSE.
The National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL) and the HSE have entered into an agreement with Genomics Medicine Ireland Limited (GMI) for the supply of reagents that will enable the NVRL to significantly ramp up testing of people with suspected coronavirus.
Components for the first 200,000 tests have already been delivered to their laboratory in Cherrywood, Dublin.
This will help to ramp up to 10,000 tests per day in the coming weeks supporting a more rapid analysis of samples and a quicker turn-around of test results to clinicians.
Dr Cillian De Gascun, Director for the NVRL, said: “Diagnostic testing for COVID-19 is critical to tracking the virus, understanding epidemiology, informing case management, and to suppressing transmission.
“Our partnership with GMI will significantly support our efforts to achieve scale in our laboratory.
“GMI’s rapid response in producing reagents for NVRL will be pivotal in our understanding of the outbreak and help in deciding when we can begin to lift current movement restrictions.”
Dr Anne Jones, CEO of GMI added: “We are proud to be able to support the national effort on Covid-19.
“We have been able to rapidly deploy our genomics and process skills in partnership with the NVRL team to enable a significant increase in the numbers of tests each day, and this most importantly supports patients and those anxiously awaiting test results.”
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