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Spitting contest: Indonesian, Singaporean firms offer saliva-based COVID-19 tests
State-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma recently released a spit sample COVID-19 test kit named Bio Saliva developed in cooperation with genomic technology start-up Nusantics.
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A handout picture released by Nusantics on July 7, 2021, shows the company's Bio Saliva COVID-19 test kit developed in cooperation with state-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma. (Nusantics Group/-)
T
wo companies from Indonesia and Singapore have developed saliva-based COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test kits that are said to be more efficient, more comfortable but nearly as accurate as throat or nasal swabs.
State-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma recently released a spit sample COVID-19 test kit named Bio Saliva developed in cooperation with genomic technology start-up Nusantics.
The kit has a sensitivity rate of 88.89 to 93.57 percent for detecting COVID-19, according to a Bio Farma press release from Saturday, not far below the 95 percent achieved with nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swabs, the gold standard for PCR testing.
“During the clinical and validation trial, we distributed Bio Saliva to several cities on the island of Java, but for commercial use, we limit them to two labs at the moment,” Nusantics CEO Sharlini Eriza Putri told The Jakarta Post in an interview on Monday.
As of Saturday, the Bio Saliva tests are available at Genomik Solidaritas Indonesia (GSI) laboratories in Kuningan and Cilandak, South Jakarta. More Bio Farma partner laboratories are to process Bio Saliva samples in the future.
Read also: Pandemic doesn't spell windfall for Indonesia's pharma industry
Sharlini said that while the Bio Saliva kit was priced at no more than Rp 250,000 (US$17.26), users may have to pay up to Rp 800,000, as PCR laboratories would impose sample processing fees.
