South Korea's biotechnology company specializing in molecular diagnostics, Seegene Inc. (KQ096530) said Thursday that the extraction-free application of Allplex™ SARS-CoV-2/FluA/FluB/RSV Assay is now available in Europe. Previously in September, Seegene had CE-IVD marked this product with the sales starting in October in Europe.

Seegene's Allplex™ SARS-CoV-2/FluA/FluB/RSV Assay is a real-time RT-PCR assay that can simultaneously detect and differentiate 8 target genes including Flu A, Flu B, RSV A/B and three different target genes of COVID-19 (S gene, RdRP gene and N gene), the first and the only test to do so in the world. The Assay also includes dual targets for internal control (endogenous and exogenous respectively) in the same reaction tube, allowing for verification of the whole test process as well as proper sampling without having to compromise the accuracy of test results.

Applying extraction-free feature onto Allplex™ SARS-CoV-2/FluA/FluB/RSV Assay is essential in countering the COVID-19 pandemic, recently compounded with influenza and common cold in the winter season. The availability of the extraction-free application allows labs without extraction equipment, previously a prerequisite for molecular diagnosis testing, to test samples for COVID-19 detection in an even shorter turnaround time (TAT). Such technological advancement, not only saves time and cost in testing for the novel Coronavirus, but enables labs to carry out massive testing, whereas before, the testing itself would not have been even possible.

An official from Seegene said that it 'hopes the extraction-free application of the assay will help expedite the control of pandemic in Europe.' The company also added that it 'anticipates the addition of the new feature will enable lab researchers to use testing kits more widely throughout the world.' According to Worldometer, the global COVID-19 patients have reached 17,148,406 in November alone, with the U.S. and Europe leading the chart.