SINGAPORE - A Covid-19 test kit which greatly reduces the time needed to diagnose a patient was launched by home-grown biotech company Veredus Laboratories on Thursday .
To that effect, a specially formulated preservation buffer is added to the sample to stabilise and preserve the viral RNA, bringing about time savings of around 40 minutes and reducing the total processing time of the test to 90 minutes. The new test kit requires 10 copies of RNA from the viral sample in order to detect for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The company said this was comparable to most traditional PCR tests kits in the market.
Using the same PCR method, the ZeroPrep Saliva Collection Kit from the same company is able to test for Covid-19 directly by taking saliva samples from the patient.