Article about Randox in the Irish Times early last year. Not really surprising they were given a UK government contract?
2 March 2020
Randox, the Co Antrim health diagnostics company which has developed a rapid test for the new strain of coronavirus, will start shipping test kits this week to hospitals in China to help in the global fight against Covid-19.
The test, which was developed using the company’s proprietary biochip array technology, identifies Covid-19 and differentiates it from nine other respiratory infections.
According to Mark Campbell, a senior manager with Randox, the biochip-based test kits will enable clinicians to deliver results more quickly and this will help speed up the diagnosis and treatment of patients.
Mr Campbell said the Randox coronavirus biochip tests each individual patient sample for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, and nine other respiratory viruses, including Sars, Mers, and influenza A and B.
Additionally, the technology can process up to 324 patient samples, generating 3,240 reportable results, over an eight-hour period.
Mr Campbell said hospitals across Wuhan, including the Central Theatre General Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army in Wuhan and the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, would be among the first medical centres to receive the Randox coronavirus biochip.
He said the company was also seeing strong demand for its biochip test kit from other countries and was working with governments and health agencies in Japan, Spain, the Philippines, Vietnam, UAE, Morocco, Mexico and Guatemala. It said it was “actively engaged” with 40 countries worldwide in relation to the coronavirus test.
“There is significant demand for the coronavirus biochip which we are currently manufacturing in Northern Ireland and we also have additional manufacturing capability at our facility in Donegal which we may utilise in this particular case.
www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/randox-ships-covid-19-test-kits-to-wuhan-hospitals-1.4190697