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| All Heroes |<\/p>\n
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On April 5, an U.S. magazine, Forbes reported on a firm Seegene from South Korea, who developed the diagnostic test kits for COVID-19 and its executive Chun Jong-yoon. Based on the report, on December 31, the first news reached South Korea of a cluster of coronavirus infections in Wuhan. Seegene\u2019s chief executive Chun Jong-yoon was already anticipating the worst, as the risk of a global outbreak was high. Chun immediately ceased all other work at his Seoul-based biotech firm, Seegene, and ordered his lead researcher and staff to focus entirely on producing a diagnostic kit for the Covid-19. \u201cDevelopment needed to be very fast,\u201d Chun says. \u201cBefore the situation became more serious, we had to be prepared.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
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In two weeks Seegene had developed its test and got approved for the use on February 12 from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). <\/b>Such go-aheads typically take at least six months; European health authorities gave approval five days earlier. \u201cIt was an urgent matter so it was important to respond quickly,\u201d Chun says. \u201cThe fact that the KCDC approved this in two weeks was unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It was the availability of Seegene\u2019s test kits, along with the government\u2019s rapid response to do massive testing and other measures, that helped South Korea contain the spread of Covid-19.<\/b> In a country of 51 million, South Korea has recorded less than 10,000 cases, below the figure for Switzerland, with a population of 8.6 million.<\/p>\n
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Previously producing 100,000 tests per week, the firm says its capacity has risen to 1 million tests. It has tests going to 40 countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and countries around Asia; it submitted the test to the U.S. and is awaiting approval from the FDA. With infections still spreading worldwide, Seegene is now preparing to ramp up production even more.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRight now we are stopping everything else and putting all our effort into producing the kits,\u201d Chun says. \u201cThe demand from governments and medical agencies has been overwhelming. We could potentially supply as much as 3 million test kits per week.<\/p>\n
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But if there is still a shortage, we could provide the expertise [for others] to develop the kit for free. We have that intention,\u201d he says. \u201cThe virus shouldn\u2019t spread due to limitations in testing.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n
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Seegene\u2019s test resides in a single test tube, where it identifies three target genes present in Covid-19. Because it streamlines the testing process, it takes a tenth the time of manual tests and reduces the risk of human error in diagnosis.<\/p>\n
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Such molecular diagnostics\u2014in contrast to older immunodiagnostics\u2014are faster and more accurate, Chun says. It also means people infected with Covid-19 can be spotted before they show any symptoms.<\/p>\n
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Becasue of the fast development of the kits by the Seegene and the fast approval for the use by the KCDC, it is possible to the massive test for the COVID-19 in South Korea. This shows that the government and private companies share a sense of crisis caused by the COVID-19 and cooperate with each other while doing their best to overcome the crisis in their respective positions.<\/b><\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_blurb][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.4.2″ custom_padding=”0px||10px|||” hover_enabled=”0″]– source: https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesasia\/2020\/04\/05\/how-one-firms-covid-19-tests-help-control-the-virus-in-south-korea\/#650c99295bff <\/span>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" | All Heroes |On April 5, an U.S. magazine, Forbes reported on a firm Seegene from South Korea, who developed the diagnostic test kits for COVID-19 and its executive Chun Jong-yoon. Based on the report, on December 31, the first news reached South Korea of a cluster of coronavirus infections in Wuhan. Seegene\u2019s chief executive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covid19english.prkorea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}