Iran produces rapid test kits for Omicron Covid

The managing director of Barekat E-Health Company says only three countries in the world currently possess the technology to produce the kits.

Sajjad Moraveji says the kits enable tracking of the new variant in just 15 minutes.

“After testing, the kit’s barcode, the patient’s national number and the sampler’s national number as well as the date and venue of sampling are digitally registered and then people who were in contact with the infected person are tracked,” he said.

Moraveji added that the diagnostic kit has been produced by Iranian researchers and is now available on the Iranian market.

He said the kit has an accuracy rate of 92 percent and a sensitivity rate of 98 percent.

Moraveji further stressed that his company is now producing 200-thousand kits a day, but its capacity can be increased if there is demand inside the country.

Iran has seen a 25-percent leap in the number of its daily coronavirus infections since Friday, after weeks of low infection numbers that raised hopes the disease had subsided across the country.

Officials say the surge is due to the omicron variant of the coronavirus. They say currently more than one in four of the new infections are diagnosed as omicron and have called on people to pay greater attention to observing health protocols.