With almost 7,800 infected throughout the Chinese territory, and a considerable increase of positive cases in different countries worldwide, the outbreak of the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has already exceeded the SARS epidemic in 2003, also in China.
Coronavirus 2019-nCoV can cause pneumonia with a high fever, dry cough, headache and shortness of breath. With an incubation period from three to seven days, with a maximum of 14, Chinese scientists have confirmed that contagion is possible during the incubation period.
Certest Biotec is developing the new “VIASURE 2019-nCoV Real Time PCR Kit”, for the identification of the virus. Thanks to the company experience in qPCR diagnostic tests with Coronavirus (229E, NL63, 0C43 and HKU1) and MERS-coronavirus already included in the VIASURE porfolio, development time will be shorter.
In the words of Carlos Genzor, Technical Manager and one of the Certest Biotec founding partners, along with Oscar Landeta, “in the development of the Wuhan coronavirus test, we have updated the primers and probes of the diagnostic reaction to match exactly the most recent published sequences of 2019-nCoV. We are working to finish the development in a very short period of time.”
One of the main hallmarks of Certest is the rapid response capacity against similar situations such as the one we are living with the Chinese coronavirus.
Genzor adds, “with the 2012 Flu epidemic, or the 2015-2016 WHO global emergency declaration for the Zika epidemic, we know how to react in a very short space of time and develop a very reliable assay to detect the virus and being able to help with an early diagnosis. We are very aware of the seriousness of the situation, so we hope to contribute to fight against this pandemic.”
VIASURE Real Time PCR Detection kits is the Certest brand that develops molecular biology assays to identify pathogens that cause infectious diseases by amplifying fragments of the DNA of the pathogen present in the patient sample.
