Saturday, March 14, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci: President Trump’s national emergency declaration gives “really important” tools to fight coronavirus











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Roche Diagnostics began shipping 400,000 to 500,000 Coronavirus test kits from the company’s manufacturing facilities in New Jersey on Friday via “the fastest means available” to laboratories around the country. A spokesman for the company, an American subsidiary of Switzerland-based Roche, told Breitbart News on Friday that the SARS-CoV-2 test kits that detect the virus that causes Coronavirus (COVID-19), approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, are being sent to 32 laboratory sites around the country where the company’s cobas 6800 and cobas 8800 molecular testing machines are currently used to run a variety of other medical tests. The spokesman told Breitbart News that 32 out of the 110 laboratory sites in the United States that currently use the cobas 6800/cobas 8800 testing machines were selected as recipients of the first batch of SARS-CoV-2 test kits because they are national reference laboratories or hospitals near areas that have been identified as hot zones of Coronavirus outbreaks. “We want to make tests available to patients where they are needed most. So we worked with the CDC to develop a strategy that prioritizes labs with the broadest geographic reach and highest patient impact. These labs also have the ability to implement high-volume testing immediately,” Roche Diagnostics said in fact sheet emailed to Breitbart News on Friday. The SARS-CoV-2 test is an additional test these laboratories will now be capable of running as early as Monday. Given the current Coronavirus health threats, it is anticipated that many of these laboratories will focus their cobas 6800/cobas 8800 usage on running the SARS-CoV-2 tests.

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