Havana: Cuba exceeded for two consecutive days the seven thousand daily tests to detect Covid-19 and the objective today is to increase that number in order to find the largest number of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, Prensa Latina publishes .
At the beginning of this week, 7,164 tests were analyzed in the country’s medical laboratories on Monday and another 7,572 tests on Tuesday, which accumulated until the day before, 446,776 real-time PCR test applied since the beginning of the pandemic in the month of March.
The head of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health, Francisco Durán, recently highlighted the capacity of the scientific laboratories of the largest of the Antilles such as the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine, Havana?s hospitals Hermanos Ameijeiras, Luis Díaz Soto, Manuel Fajardo and Fructuoso Rodríguez in the fast and efficient processing of PCR.
These institutions are joined in the capital by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Immunoassay Center and the Civil Defense Research Center of Cuba.
Also in the provincial centers of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology of several provinces, tests are analyzed daily to detect SARS-CoV-2.
?We continue working on increasing the number of tests applied every day, so that more people can be reached. We have created the conditions and we will achieve it?, the specialist said.
Meanwhile, Cuban scientific institutions today turn their efforts to developing the vaccine candidate for Covid-19, Soberana 01, currently in the clinical trials phase and also in obtaining national manufacturing methods to detect the largest number of patients infected with the new coronavirus.
Proof of this is the recent manufacture of three new diagnostic kits, one of them to identify SARS-CoV-2 developed at the Immunoassay Center of Cuba.
According to the director of this institution, Niurka Carlos, they work in the production of tests for the identification of IgM antibodies, and total IgG, IgM and IgA antibodies, with which the stage or moment of the disease in which it is affected can be verified, if the patient has recovered or if his immune system responds to treatments against the pandemic, he said.
On the other hand, the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of the Sancti Spíritus province, in close collaboration with other scientific institutions in the country, achieved notable results at the beginning of September in the generation of monoclonal antibodies that recognize one of the proteins of the new coronavirus, and obtaining, on a laboratory scale, a rapid test to detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.
The Cuban scientific community obtained the first test of national manufacture, Umelisa SARS-CoV-2 IgG, which has been in health institutions since May.
