Swiss group Roche has announced that it will launch early next year a rapid antigen test to differentiate Covid-19 from influenza A and B, the results of which will be available in 30 minutes.
Small in size, the kit is intended for professionals in the healthcare sector. It will be available from January in countries that accept the CE marking.
In addition, the pharmaceutical group also intend to apply for approval for this test early next year in the United States. According to the company, the omicron variant should also be detectable without any problems.
“It is essential that professionals can quickly tell if a patient has coronavirus or flu, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic is expanding in the flu season, “said Thomas Schinecker, director of Roche’s diagnostics section.
Contagions in Spain, on the rise
The data reported this Monday by some communities reaffirms the upward trend of new infections, in a day in which the number of professionals of the Regional University Hospital of Malaga affected by covid rises to 68 and in which new cases of omicron have also been detected in Mallorca.
The vast majority of these health workers, who work in the Intensive Care Unit of this hospital in the Malaga capital, they are asymptomatic or have a mild catarrhal condition.
Everything seems to indicate that this outbreak may have occurred during a Christmas meal less than a week ago and to which some 170 people attended, all of them negative after the antigen test that was carried out on December 1, so it is studied whether the infections occurred days before that meal.
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