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Coronavirus roundup:
US Regulators Approve Roche's New And Faster COVID-19 Test
[IBTIMES] Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche announced Friday it had received emergency approval from US regulators for a new and much faster test for diagnosing the deadly new coronavirus
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to commercialise the SARS-CoV-2 Test to detect the virus that has sparked the global COVID-19 pandemic, Roche said in a statement.

The test can be run in high volumes on fully automated equipment, Roche said, suggesting it could provide more results far faster than other tests available.

"We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10," Thomas Schinecker, head of Roche's diagnostics unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

The new Roche tests, which will also now be available in markets that accept the European CE-mark certification, are run on Roche's widely available cobas 6800/8800 systems and can provide results within 3.5 hours, the company said.

In a 24-hour period, the largest machines can provide results on up to 4,128 tests, it said.

Roche said it would have millions of tests available each month, and that it was committed to pushing the limits of its production capacity and delivering as many tests as possible.

U.S. Gen. Robert Abrams on Coronavirus: South Korea Is 'Trending Downward and Looking Good'
[BREITBART] U.S. Army Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in South Korea, said Friday that trends in South Korea, where there are more than 20,000 U.S. troops stationed, "are trending downward and looking good" in terms of the spread of the Chinese coronavirus.
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
"Currently, South Korea trends are trending downward and looking good," he said at a Pentagon video-conference briefing on Friday.

Among the USFK community, he said only nine out of 145 tested positive for coronavirus. That includes one service member and two family members, and the rest were South Korean employees or contractors. All nine lived off-base, he said.

"Out of a population of 58,000 that touches U.S. Forces Korea daily ‐ that’s a pretty low number," he said. "Less than 1/100th of a percent of positive cases."

Abrams said at the peak of the epidemic in South Korea, USFK had 392 people in self-quarantine, and today, there are 55 people in self-quarantine.

"We have seen a downward trend for the last two weeks," he said.

The general shared how USFK was able to stop the spread of coronavirus among its four installations in South Korea, close to China, where the novel coronavirus originated. He said on January 27, when the outbreak in China started to gain traction and national attention, USFK enhanced 24/7 monitoring and assessing.

On January 28, USFK initiated a data call for service members who had traveled to or through China.
Posted by: trailing wife 2020-03-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=565880