UK Life Sciences Firms Working To Boost COVID-19 Testing
Date posted:
News
The UK government has set an ambitious target of conducting 100,000 COVID-19 tests per day by the end of April, and the country’s pharmaceutical firms and diagnostics companies are stepping up to do what they can to make that happen.
New business collaborations between some of the country’s largest pharmaceutical businesses, such as AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are being established to help test people, particularly frontline workers, to find out whether they currently have the virus.
One of the collaborations is between AstraZeneca, GSK and Cambridge University, where a new testing laboratory will be established to carry out 30,000 tests per day by the beginning of May.
Thermo Fisher, meanwhile, which is producing testing kits for COVID-19 and already supplying the UK, is looking at how it can scale up its production efforts to meet increased demand.
Health minister Lord Bethell commented: “We will do everything we can to tackle this virus and we are pooling all the resources from our world-leading life sciences industry, top universities and clinical leaders to overcome this together.”
The government has also set up an online portal where businesses can find out what the most pressing needs are in relation to the fight against COVID-19 and see where they may be able to provide assistance.
In addition, the government is seeking partners to develop an antibody test to determine whether people have immunity to COVID-19 after contracting the virus. Business consortium UK Rapid Test Consortium, which is made up of Oxford University, Abingdon Health, BBI Solutions and CIGA Healthcare, is working on this particular challenge.
Earlier in April, the government announced that the UK had launched the world’s largest randomised clinical trial of potential treatments for COVID-19, with the aim to recruit thousands of patients from across the UK’s hospitals to participate.
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