CORONAVIRUS/Taiwan-developed rapid screening reagent put into trial production

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) A research team at Academia Sinica has developed a key reagent for a pioneering rapid screening test for the COVID-19 coronavirus disease and the technology has been transferred to seven companies, one or two of which will be chosen for possible mass production, James Liao (廖俊智), president of Taiwan's most prestigious research institution, said Thursday.

The team led by Yang An-suei (楊安綏), a research fellow at the institution's Genomics Research Center, has yielded the unprecedented results at unimaginable speed, Liao said at a legislative hearing, adding that it took only one month for the team to create a product prototype, compared with the three-six months normally required for such development.

He was responding to a question about the progress after Academia Sinica announced last month that the research team had synthesized monoclonal antibodies that can identify the protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The reagent will be able to provide COVID-19 test results within just 15 minutes, according to Academia Sinica.

Read more: Focus Taiwan