A biomedicine company affiliated with the Iranian Defense Ministry has unveiled homemade rapid tests kits for new coronavirus as the country moves to contain an outbreak that has affected tens of thousands of people.
A military commander supervising the development of the test kits said on Monday that the diagnostics tool will be able to determine the disease in three hours.
Brigadier General Azizi Delshad said that kits are capable of identifying all genomes related to the new coronavirus, helping health authorities to increase diagnostic capacity and save patients in early stages of contracting the COVID-19.
Delshad told the IRIB News that the prototypes of the kit had been developed in early March, adding that the Iranian health ministry has certified the kits for mass production.
“This kit is nothing short of its rivals in the world and in some cases there has been privileges in terms of accuracy and precision,” he said, adding that the Defense Ministry was capable of producing the kits in large numbers in a short period of time to respond to orders inside and outside Iran.
The first kit was provided last week by a private pharmaceutical company that distributed 10,000 coronavirus test kits to a total of 100 labs across Iran.
The coronavirus test kits produced by Pishtaz Teb company provide results in 2 hours. The firm is capable of producing 80,000 coronavirus test kits per week.