Diagnostic Testing Company Says It Can Produce 50K Coronavirus Tests per Day

A Utah-based diagnostic testing company claimed Monday that it has the resources to produce 50,000 Chinese coronavirus tests daily.

Co-Diagnostics said it has the ability to produce the tests from its facility in Salt Lake City, according to the Deseret News.

“Each test, according to the company, costs about $10 per patient, delivers results in about 90 minutes and can be processed at most medical labs,” the report said.

Monday, Utah tech sector advocacy group Silicon Slopes hosted a phone call with community leaders and Co-Diagnostics’ Communication Director Seth Egan, who said his company had already gained approval from the European Union.

However, the test that uses a sputum sample to trace evidence of the disease was still waiting for action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Egan commented:

With FDA approval through emergency use authorization we could supply all of the testing needs in Utah and around us easily. We sit here a little bit amazed that we have a test available in European nations but we can’t sell it as a clinical diagnostic in our own home state. We do have the ability to make 50,000-plus tests a day and get them out to our community.

Also on Monday, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said testing for the disease had “reached a turning point,” meaning more people were being screened at the local level, according to Breitbart News.

“Important for people to know that the CDC stood up a test in less than one week for a new virus, so that was a record, but the CDC was never designed to provide hundreds of millions of tests. It was designed to respond to outbreaks,” he stated during an interview on Fox & Friends.

Adams continued:

So, we went from CDC testing, which was slow by almost design, and then we actually stood up 83 different state labs, and you saw testing increase there. But the turning point was last Thursday when the FDA approved a new rapid throughput test, which will exponentially increase the amount of new tests that can be run. … You’re starting to see more testing at the local level. Again, we’ve reached a turning point, and it’s because of the private industry.

In an update Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a total of 4,226 confirmed and presumptive positive cases of the coronavirus in the United States.

The agency urged anyone exhibiting symptoms of the virus such as a fever, cough, or difficulty breathing to call their healthcare provider for further instruction.

“They will decide whether you need to be tested, but keep in mind that there is no treatment for COVID-19 and people who are mildly ill may be able to isolate and care for themselves at home,” the agency concluded.