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Race to diagnose coronavirus patients constrained by shortage of reliable detection kits
- Chinese authorities issued approvals within two weeks for seven kits that employ the nucleic acid method to test for the presence of the virus
- Liferiver, a Shanghai-based biotech company, took 20 days from development of its kit to market launch
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Wuhan resident William Yang has been a bundle of nerves. For more than a week his 57-year-old mother showed symptoms of a cold, then high fever and breathing difficulties, but she was not treated as a novel coronavirus case until last Thursday.
The first appointment on February 1 was cancelled due to a shortage of test kits. Two days later, they secured one of the last tests in the daily quota at another hospital.
While it was a relief when his mother initially tested negative for the coronavirus, her condition deteriorated and after a second test she was diagnosed as positive but had to wait another day for a hospital bed.
“Quite a few days have been wasted,” he said on the phone. “First there were not enough diagnostic kits, then a false test.”
Her condition had not improved as of Monday, Yang said.
The rapidly-spreading virus, which originated in Yang’s home city, has exceeded the number of deaths globally from the 2003 Sars epidemic. Scientists from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and the US have joined global efforts to develop more powerful diagnostic methods to speed up patient screening.
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