Quarter of a million COVID-19 tests being made each month in Sydney’s south
A business based in Mascot is currently making a staggering 250,000 test kits per month to diagnose patients with suspected COVID-19. The company has been swamped with orders.
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A business in Mascot is doing its part to battle the coronavirus pandemic – working around the clock to make quarter of a million COVID-19 test kits each month.
AusDiagnostics makes diagnostic tests for a range of illnesses and is currently making a staggering 250,000 test kits per month to diagnose patients with suspected COVID-19.
It took the company about a month to create their own COVID-19 test kits which are in high demand and widely used across hospitals in Sydney and Melbourne.
AusDiagnostics managing director Keith Stanley said orders were flooding in and they had scaled up their production from four days a week to around-the-clock production at their base in Mascot.
“We used to work one (eight-hour) shift four days a week and on the fifth day we would do our packaging,” he said. “Now we are doing two shifts, seven days per week.”
Professor Stanley said they decided to make their own test kit for COVID-19 in mid-January in the “off chance” it became widespread.
“We decided we should make a test for it on the off chance that it became significant,” Professor Stanley said. “The rest is history.”
He said they had employed about a dozen more staff to help with the increased production and they also had branches in Dallas, London and Auckland servicing other communities around the world.
Professor Stanley explained they designed the test using a method called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common technique in molecular biology used to sample and test DNA.
Testing includes taking a swab of a person’s throat or nose.
Last month, Australia’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, raised concerns about a shortage in the supply of coronavirus test kits in Australia.
Patients must meet a list of criteria just to be tested for COVID-19 in NSW hospitals with test kits still in hot demand.
AusDiagnostics has been operating for 14 years and is based in Mascot.
The company’s test kits were used on Christmas Island in February to test Australians being evacuated from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
Professor Stanley, the founder of AusDiagnostics, has himself spent two weeks in self isolation after flying home from the US.