South Korean manufacturers of testing kits for COVID-19 are gearing up for exports worldwide, notably to the U.S., after having produced them for testing more than 300,000 Koreans since the first cases in the country were confirmed in January.
Korean companies were eager to ship test kits to the U.S. after a telephone conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in in which Trump suggested Korea send “medical equipment” to the United States. The Blue House, the center of presidential power in Seoul, not the White House, reported the request, and the State Department confirmed the U.S. has reached out to a number of companies for test kits and other equipment, including ventilators.
Moon, visiting Seegene, one of Korea’s leading makers of biomedical equipment, praised the company for rapidly developing test kits needed to stop the epidemic from spreading. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has approved Seegene and four other companies for making test kits that are now in widespread use in Korea and may be ready for export pending approval by other countries, including the U.S. CDC.
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The online Korea Biomedical Review said the need for testing was such that the test kits won rapid approval in Korea through a system under which medical institutions were permitted “to use temporarily unauthorized medical supplies or diagnostic reagents for emergencies during an epidemic.”
The Review article quoted Chun Jong-yoon, Seegene CEO, as saying “the urgent use approval system helped us get approval in just one week and supply the product.” Seegene, he said, “could rapidly develop the reagent and the kit by adding our know-how to the disclosed coronavirus sequence data.”
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