In South Korea, a biotech company named Seegene has created a test kit to check Coronavirus infection even before the country officially registered their first COVID-19 case.
Before there were any cases of novel coronavirus confirmed in South Korea, one of the country’ biotech firms had started preparing to make testing kits to identify the deadly disease.
On 16th January, Chun Jong-yoon, the chief executive and founder of molecular biotech company Seegene, said to his team it was time to start focusing on coronavirus.
South Korea had 7,869 confirmed cases of Covid-19- coronavirus as of 12th March – the fourth highest number in the world outside China, Italy and Iran.
MFDS- Ministry of Food and Drug Safety recently approved the first urgent-use licenses to four COVID-19 novel coronavirus diagnostic kits to battle this deadly disease in the country. Out of the 64 kits submitted for approval, Ministry of Food and Drug Safety completed checks on 19and four were approved, six were rejected due to poor functioning, eight were withdrawn and one was unavailable for the testing. There are 45 kits still under review, with 29 under document review, 8 waiting for clinical evaluations, and another 8requiring additional data.
Seegene is one of four domestic companies which is providing coronavirus test kits in South Korea.