Ever since the coronavirus outbreak, which has so far killed thousands of people across the world, South Korea has worked aggressively on measures to tackle the pandemic, and succeeded too.
A South Korean firm has developed a simple tester that it said could detect if a person is infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) in just 10 minutes, according to local news site Media News1.
The company, PCL, a provider of in vitro diagnostic products, said its breakthrough testing kit, named COVID-19 Ag GICA Rapid, can check nasal discharge for the presence of the virus within 10 minutes with an accuracy rate of around 85 per cent.
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The testing can be done at home, just like a pregnancy test, and will help in removing the stigma associated with going out and getting a test done. It also cuts the risk of exposure to other people.
Having developed the kits, South Korea is now exporting these to several other countries which are facing dearth of testing and screening measures, which may lead to increase in deaths due to the virus.
Other countries such as China and Japan have also made such rapid test kits and are mass producing them from testing in home country and donation.
South Korea has shown remarkable decline in the number of coronavirus positive cases, all due to robust screening in place.
South Korea immediately began testing hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic people, including at drive-through centres. South Korea employed a central tracking app, Corona 100m, that publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 metres of where they are, said a report by The Guardian.
March 16 onwards, South Korea started to screen all people arriving at airports, Koreans included.
According to worldometers.info, a website completing real-time data on coronavirus statistics, there are 308,540 cases and 13,069 deaths worldwide due to the novel virus.