Molecular diagnostics company Genedrive PLC and therapeutics technology provider Cytiva have partnered to develop the Genedrive 96 SARS-CoV-2 testing kit to diagnose coronavirus.
Cytiva, formerly GE Healthcare Life sciences, will develop the testing kits as one of two programmes announced in late March aimed at tackling the pandemic.
The new kits will boost the number of manufactured kits to over 10,000 tests per hour, in addition to global deployment without refrigeration.
David Budd, chief executive officer of Genedrive, said in a statement that his company had "extensive experience" working with Cytiva in making Point of Care Hepatitis C virus (HCV), antibiotic induced hearing loss and military programmes.
The partnership would result in a "high throughput manufacturing process", allowing both companies to "produce simple [testing] solutions at a significant scale", Mr Budd added.
Gabriel Fernandez de Pierola, general manager of Genomics and Diagnostics at Cytiva, said that the pandemic was a driving an "urgent need for extensive testing", namely among frontline healthcare workers and patients.
“Critical to overcoming the pandemic is being able to produce high volumes of reliable tests which can be shipped easily on a global basis with minimal environmental impact", he concluded.
The developments could bring a potential windfall after the British government came under fire in early April for pledging to increase COVID-19 tests to 100,000 a day by the end of April, despite only conducting 25,000 tests a day at the time.
Numerous media, including Piers Morgan of Good Morning Britain, slammed the Health Minister for failing to reach the 25,000 daily quota for testing, resulting in a public row between the two.