USFDA approved rapid coronavirus test kit that gives a result within 45 min

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given emergency approval to a test that might diagnose COVID-19 in 45 minutes, CNN reported.

The test developed by California based company

The tests were developed by California-based company Cepheid and may be shipped to U.S. facilities by March 30, according to an FDA announcement. However, right now, the tests are likely only going to be utilized during a hospital setting, where a patient is already in an ER or hospital triage wing and needs to be diagnosed rapidly, STAT reported.

“We don’t believe this technology should be used, a minimum of initially, during a doctor’s office,” David Persing, chief medic of Cepheid, told STAT. “This isn’t a test for the worried well.”

Partly, that’s because Cepheid’s production capacity is limited; it can produce many tests over the approaching weeks, Persing told STAT. against this, other companies with approved tests are getting to be able to produce many tests per week by April, according to STAT.

The U.S. has been affected by a severe shortage of tests, which allowed the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to spread undetected for weeks. Test kits initially sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were faulty, and for weeks the govt. forbade local labs from developing their own kits.

Testing has ramped up significantly within the past fortnight, and as a result, the quantity of confirmed cases within the country has skyrocketed. As of Saturday (March 21), the U.S. had logged quite 24,000 cases, quite half within the state of New York.

As nearly every country within the planet races to diagnose and contain new cases, the U.S. is now facing competition for supplies, like swabs and chemical reagents, that are needed to run the tests.