Germany’s Qiagen Starts Shipping CCP Virus Diagnostic Tests to United States

A medical worker holds a vial containing a swab used for CCP virus testing at a new outdoor facility at the Department of Infectious and Tropical Medicine at LMU Universtiy Hospital in Munich, Germany, on March 23, 2020. Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

German molecular testing company Qiagen NV said on March 24 it has begun shipping its diagnostic test for COVID-19 to the United States.

The test kit, QIAstat-Dx Respiratory SARS-CoV-2 Panel, requires less than one minute for sample preparation and can deliver results in about one hour, the company said.

Shipments come under a new policy laid out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this month to help accelerate the availability of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus diagnostic tests, developed by laboratories and commercial manufacturers during the public health emergency.

Microbiologist Xiugen Zhang runs a Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, test at the Connecticut State Public Health Laboratory, in Rocky Hill, Conn., on March 2, 2020. Jessica Hill/File/AP Photo

The company intends to submit an application for the related Emergency Use Authorization to the FDA this week, Qiagen said.

The test kit can differentiate the CCP virus from 20 other respiratory infections in patients who may have similar symptoms, in a single test run of about one hour.

Qiagen, which is being bought by Thermo Fisher Scientific in an $11.5 billion deal, has already received “CE” marking, a kind of fit-for-use certificate, for the diagnostic test in Europe on Wednesday.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

By Trisha Roy in Bengaluru

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.