Researchers subpackage 2019-nCoV detection reagents at a company in Wuqing district, North China's Tianjin municipality, Jan 27, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
On Sunday, Tianjin University announced that a detection kit has been successfully developed by the university and the GenMag Biotechnology Co Ltd, which can detect suspected novel coronavirus cases in its earlier incubation period and detect within one hour whether it is the novel coronavirus, which significantly reduces detection time from the previous three hours.
The university also is launching research on the rapid screening of fecal samples and asymptomatic patients in their incubation period.
Late last month, Jiangsu Qitian Bio teamed up with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a detection kit that could complete the test and show results within 15 minutes, significantly faster and shortening the previous 3-hour test period.
Chongqing University announced on Thursday that it developed a detection kit that could help complete the test in one hour.
As the novel coronavirus has a long incubation period and is infectious even during the incubation period, a detection kit with high sensitivity is urgently needed in China. In addition, the rising number of suspect cases require mass and faster production of the detection kits.
Statistics indicated that by midnight Sunday, confirmed cases of viral pneumonia hit 17,205 in China and suspected cases hit 21,558.