BGI kits complete 360,000 nucleic acid tests

BGI had produced 1.5 million detection test kits to meet the demand for COVID-19 screening at hospitals, local disease control centers and laboratories across China as of Monday.

Huo-Yan Laboratory, an emergency test lab set up and run by Shenzhen-based BGI through cooperation with governments in Wuhan, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Changsha, Shijiazhuang, Beijing and Wuxi, completed 360,000 nucleic acid tests, providing rapid detection for clinical diagnosis, discharging recovered patients and scientific support for work resumption in the country, an announcement by the company said yesterday.

“This production volume is sufficient for COVID-19 screening,” said Zhang Hongyun with BGI, who is responsible for Shenzhen Huo-Yan Laboratory, yesterday.

In Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, the 2,000-square-meter lab, which was built in just five days in early February, has doubled its testing capacity to process 20,000 tests a day since Monday.

The lab in Wuhan has accumulatively completed 110,000 tests samples for people in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei Province.

Equipped with high-throughput sequencing and automated nucleic acid extraction equipment MGISP-100 and MGISP-960 manufactured by MGI, a subsidiary of BGI, Huo-Yan Laboratory can deliver test results within six hours. The increased testing speed helps to rule out infections and confirm infection cases as early as possible.

The tests are 80-90 percent accurate, according to Chen Weijun, general manager with BGI PathoGenesis Pharmaceutical Technology, citing clinical data.

Among the genomic sequencing of 13 COVID-19 cases that were submitted to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data on Dec. 30, five were contributed by BGI, according to the company.

One Huo-Yan Laboratory location in Shenzhen was set up at the Nation Genomics Bank in Dapeng New Area in three days. The two Shenzhen-based laboratories can conduct 18,000 tests a day and received 237,000 test samples mainly from Shenzhen hospitals as well as the hospitals of other cities in Guangdong Province by Monday.

In addition to labs in the above-mentioned cities, BGI is now preparing to set up labs in Shanghai, Chongqing, Kunming, Qingdao and Guiyang.

Last week, BGI’s real-time fluorescent RT-PCR kit for COVID-19 detection was awarded CE-IVD certification and is commercially available as a certified IVD in markets that accept CE marking as valid regulatory approval. It has received 310,000 test kits orders from 26 countries and regions.