Vietnam's kit for COVID-19 detection now ready for production

The ministry (MoST) made the announcement at the press briefing on March 5.

“The kit is very important for the country, especially in case the epidemic breaks out on a wider scale. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has led to an insufficiency of medical materials and devices, including a kit for virus qualitative detection. The kit has proved reliable and safe for mass production,” said Pham Cong Tac, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology.

On March 4, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son signed Decision No.774/QD-BYT, allowing Viet A Corporation to begin large-scale production of the kit for qualitative detection of COVID-19.

Back in late January, after Vietnam detected the first case of COVID-19 infection, the MoST had an urgent meeting with senior experts and scientists to discuss the possibility of conducting a research on a kit for qualitative detection of the novel virus.

The search is made by the Military Medical Institute in co-operation with Viet A Corporation – a leading medical technology firm – is successfully done in two months, and on March 3 its results were approved by the national sci-tech council led by the Minister of Science and Technology.

Phan Quoc Viet, general director of Viet A Corporation, said that it has a daily production capacity of 10,000 units. If necessary, it can be increased by three times to meet local demand as well as for exports and international support.

According to the latest update from the Ministry of Health, by 6am of March 5, the world had 95,049 COVID-10 infected cases, including 80,269 in China and 14,780 in 81 countries and territories outside China. The fatal epidemic killed 3,252 people, including 2,981 people in China, and 271 others outside China.

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