ISRAEL ACQUIRES US MADE RAPID CORONA TEST

1-hour corona testing hailed as 'game-changer'

By Maytal Yasur Beit-Or

Israel Hayom
April 27, 2020

Laboratory equipment that provides coronavirus test results in 45 minutes has been in use in Israel for the past week and a half, Israel Hayom has learned.

The new test processing units from the US-based Cepheid are considerably faster that the equipment previously used, which took three to four hours to show results. The units have been installed in over 40 hospitals, including geriatric centers.

The ability to achieve rapid results combined with extensive testing and epidemiological study is considered one of the most important tools in the nation's strategy to transition out of "corona mode." The new systems are in use mainly for cases considered urgent, such as women in labor who want to know if they have the virus, or geriatric patients who are hospitalized. The units, which can analyze up to 16 corona tests at once, are also used for medical staff.

After the new technology was approved for use in the US, the Trump administration placed limits on export quantities, but Israel's Medison Pharma imported a few of the systems via Sweden.

Professor Mitchell Schwaber of the National Center for Infection Control and Antibiotic Resistance in the Health Ministry said, "In my opinion, at this stage of our battle against the virus, the ability to diagnose as many people as possible quickly is critical. That ability has an enormous effect on the ability to test medial staff, to hospitalization of acute, geriatric, and psychiatric patients, and the community. In addition, rapid identification of carriers in the population at large is vital to our ability to isolate corona carriers quickly and get to the people with whom they had contact in real time, which is a game-changer."

Meir Jakobsohn, founder and CEO of Medison, said that the units from Cepheid were in "enormous demand in the US and abroad."

"The test is accurate and of high-quality and is characterized by the health and defense ministries as a 'game-changer' when it comes to finding and discovering cases of coronavirus," Jakobsohn said.

"I'm happy we managed to ensure a steady supply of tests to quickly. Our systems have been in place in Israeli hospitals for years, so the tests can be immediately put to use nationwide," he added.