TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Roche aims to start selling COVID-19 antibody test next month
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Roche said it aims to have its test available by early May in countries accepting Europe’s CE mark and that it’s working with the US Food and Drug Administration to gain permission for emergency use. (Shutterstock/Kateryna Kon)
R
oche Holding AG developed an antibody test for COVID-19 that it says it plans to start selling early next month, adding another of the diagnostic tools experts think will be needed to lift social-distancing measures put in place around the globe.
The test will probe blood samples for antibodies that show whether a person has been infected by the new coronavirus, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said in statement. Monthly production could reach the high double-digit millions by June.
“We will have a very, very steep ramp up,” said Thomas Schinecker, Roche’s head of diagnostics, in a phone interview. It plans to adopt the same high-intensity approach to making this test as it has been using to churn out its molecular tests, which have been around since January. “We are working 24 hours, seven days a week.”
Antibody testing is crucial to help identify people who have already been infected, maybe even unknowingly, and better understand the pandemic’s true scope. A wide testing campaign could help pinpoint those who are presumably immune to the new coronavirus and can start rebuilding shattered economies. And it can also be used in tandem with other tests that look for the virus in a person’s nose or throat.
The accuracy of the antibody tests has been a point of concern. Countries including the UK, Spain and the Czech Republic ordered large numbers of early versions of the tests, only to later acknowledge that the kits they’d bought weren’t reliable enough to be used widely. The tests are bad at diagnosing people with the virus early on, since the body needs a week or more to build up large amounts of antibodies. And if they’re not sensitive enough, they can misread antibodies from other viruses as a past COVID-19 infection.
Read also: Malaysia turns to coronavirus antibody tests to supplement laboratory checks
Roche said it aims to have its test available by early May in countries accepting Europe’s CE mark and that it’s working with the US Food and Drug Administration to gain permission for emergency use. It plans to publish figures about how reliable its test is when producing positive and negative results closer to the product’s launch.
The test will be available to hospitals and reference laboratories that have Roche’s “cobas e” device, a fully automated system that can produce 300 results per hour. One test takes about 18 minutes, the company said.
