Handheld coronavirus test approved in Canada
OTTAWA — Rapid COVID-19 testing devices are on the way to remote and Indigenous communities where access and timely results have been hindered by distance and few resources, officials said Monday after a new test kit was approved over the weekend.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said the hand-held DNA analyzer from Ottawa’s Spartan Bioscience will offer rapid results for health services in rural and remote areas that otherwise must send their samples to laboratories in larger centres.
Dubbed the Spartan Cube and about the size of a coffee cup, results can be had in less than an hour and do not require specialized expertise and equipment of a large lab.
Spartan Bioscience said the tests will be rolled out “immediately,” but it wasn’t clear how many were ready or where they would first be deployed.
Tam said the number of devices ready for shipment “is constantly being updated.”
“All I can say is we will get everything that this supplier will be able to provide in the coming months,” said Tam.
“The procurement contract itself is: try and secure supply of the devices with 14,000 units per month in the upcoming months, and then see how that progresses in terms of the supply rate. But every day we have to reevaluate the moving parts on this.”
Spartan Bioscience Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for details Monday.
The need for greater testing is acknowledged as key to understanding the true scope of COVID-19 infection in Canada, and how best to deploy suppression strategies.
Without such control measures, experts warn health-care systems can be overwhelmed by a surge in cases. CEO Paul Lem said earlier this month that production was being ramped up in anticipation of Health Canada approval, but he said scaling up to full capacity “is going to take some time.”
He expected to begin with weekly shipments in the “thousands,” which would escalate to 10,000. “Then it ramps up to like 50 (thousand) and then 100,000 per week,” he said.
While remote regions will be prioritized for now, Lem said he could see a day when the test could be deployed at workplaces or homes.
“Ultimately, once devices become widely available enough and tests become affordable ... everyone will be testing it,” Lem said.
Lem said the test, in which either the nose or throat is swabbed, can be operated by non-laboratory personnel in places such as airports, border crossings, doctors’ offices, pharmacies and clinics. He said a positive result can be had in about 30 minutes, while a negative result takes a little longer.
But while Spartan is rapid, it’s not meant to replace current methods, which involves specialized equipment known as PCR machines.
That’s because the PCR machines can process either 96 or 384 samples at a time depending on the size of the machine, whereas each Cube can only do one test in an hour.
Spartan’s competitors include the Chicagobased Abbott, which produces a toaster-sized rapid testing kit that promises a result in 13 minutes.
Then there’s the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based molecular diagnostics company Cepheid, which makes a device that can produce results in about 45 minutes.