Coronavirus test
In Russia, a test will be created to detect "Chinese pneumonia"
The Center for Strategic Planning (CSP) of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation is creating an express test to detect coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which has already gone beyond China. It is assumed that the diagnosis of the virus will take only 15-20 minutes, it can be used at airports.
According to experts, the prototype of the laboratory technique will be ready by the end of January. At Russian airports, arrivals from China are already being checked with thermal imagers to identify people with elevated temperatures. But this measure does not allow to detect those who have the disease in the incubation period.
"We started working on the creation of reagents on January 14, immediately after the placement of the genome of the new pneumonia virus in the NCBI international database," German Shipulin, deputy director of the CSP, told Izvestia.
The expert added that there is no clear definition yet of what the clinical picture of an infectious disease caused by this virus is. But in any case, it is flu-like or ARI-like.
"If a person is sick, we will be able to tell for sure whether the symptoms are caused by the coronavirus. In addition, the reagents will allow to examine those who were in contact with the patient," Shipulin explained.
The resulting set of reagents is unsuitable for mass screening of passengers, testing takes several hours, and such a measure will simply block the operation of airports. But the test will allow you to quickly clarify the diagnosis of those who fell ill after a trip to China.
According to Alexander Lukashev, director of the Institute of Medical Parasitology, Tropical and Vector–borne Diseases named after E.I. Marcinovsky Sechenov University, the Chinese coronavirus is mutating rapidly, and its main reservoir in nature is bats.
"These animals have a huge number of coronaviruses, but in order for one of them to penetrate the human population, close contact is needed. In China, bats are used as a food product," Shipulin said.
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