Russia registers new COVID-19 express-test that produces results in 40 minutes

Russia’s Federal Health Care Supervisory Agency (Roszdravnadzor) has registered a new COVID-19 “express test” that produces results within 40 minutes. According to the news agency Interfax, the test is 94-percent accurate. 

“Generium,” the pharmaceutical company behind the new test, still has limited production capacity, but spokespeople say it hopes to be manufacturing up to 500,000 express tests a week. Until now, “Smartlifekea” was the only other company in Russia that had registered its own COVID-19 express-tests, the delivery of which has been handled by “Evotech-Mirai Genomix,” which has received support from the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the government’s sovereign wealth fund.

The company “Sistema-Biotech,” a subsidiary of the conglomerate “AFK Sistema PAO,” previously announced plans to register its own COVID-19 express-tests, as well. These tests are expected to use reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (a laboratory technique combining reverse transcription of RNA into DNA and amplification of specific DNA targets using polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

On April 3, Roszdravnadzor registered the company “DNA-Technologies,” which plans to manufacture 100,000 test kits a day that rely on real-time PCR (another laboratory technique of molecular biology). 

Eight organizations in Russia have registered COVID-19 tests: the “Vektor” State Scientific Center, the Health Ministry’s Strategic Planning and Risk Management Center, the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, “Vektor-Best,” “Litech,” “Smartlifekea,” “DNA Technologies,” and “Generium.”

According to officials, Russia is testing more than 30,000 people a day for COVID-19.

On April 6, Russia’s Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare Federal Service launched paid home testing for coronavirus. So far, it’s only available in Moscow and the Moscow region.