( Reuters) – Roche ( ROG.S) has actually won emergency situation approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test to determine whether people have ever been infected with the coronavirus, the Swiss drugmaker said on Sunday.
FILE IMAGE: The logo of Swiss drugmaker Roche is seen at its head office in Basel, Switzerland January 30,2020 REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
Thomas Schinecker, Roche’s head of diagnostics, said the company intends to more than double production of tests from about 50 million a month to significantly more than 100 million a month by the end of the year.
Federal governments, services and people are looking for such blood tests to discover who might have had the illness, who may have some immunity and to possibly craft methods to help end national lockdowns.
Basel-based Roche, which also makes molecular tests to identify active COVID-19 infections, said its antibody test has a specificity rate surpassing 99.8%