50.000 diagnostic tests for COVID-19, developed by Slovak scientists with the support of the global company cybernobetter safetys ESET, were delivered to Nairobi, Kenya under the SlovakAid humanitarian aid program of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia.
Η Mission of humanitarian aid took place on July 27 and – in addition to the 50.000 diagnostic tests – included a thermal cycler (PCR) to carry out the tests as well as 20.000 FFP2 respirators.
The diagnostic test was approved by the State Drug Control Institute of the Slovak Republic on 14 May 2020 and entered in the European Register EUDAMED on 26 May 2020 for distribution in Europe as an in vitro diagnostic test with CE marking. The diagnostic kit is named vDetect COVID-19 RT-qPCR and was developed through the collaborative research of scientists from the Slovak company MultiplexDX, the Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Comenius University Science Center in Bratislava and experts from Companies Lambda Life and ProScience Tech.
“As one of the key contributors to the development of the diagnostic test for the disease COVID-19, ESET is pleased to see that countries that need help, like Kenya, can benefit from our efforts. We are ready to contribute to similar initiatives in the future" said Palo Luka, CEO of ESET.
Pavol Čekan, founder of MultiplexDX, said “we quickly developed a new PCR test for the disease COVID-19 that can reliably help diagnose patients at an early stage. Having supplied a large number of diagnostic tests for the needs of laboratories in Slovakia, we turned our efforts to increasing production to meet the needs of other countries that can benefit from the test, such as Kenya."
