Shares of Omega Diagnostics (LON: ODX)are trading higher on Friday after the company said it has launched its VISITECT Covid-19 antigen test.
The medical diagnostics firm said the product's launch is the final stage in the commercial roll-out following the successful CE marking announced last month.
The test utilises either throat and nasal swabs or nasal only and provides results in 10 minutes. It has a sensitivity of 98.4% on samples with a cycle threshold of < 20 and a specificity of 97.8%.
Omega said it is talking with several potential commercial partners looking to order and distribute the test.
The AIM-listed company also provided an update on its contract with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) which will see them provide manufacturing capacity for Covid-19 lateral flow antigen tests.
Omega said they are waiting on the DHSC to confirm which test has successfully passed its performance evaluations. Once a suitable test has been approved, the DHSC will license the test for Omega to manufacture.
Colin King, CEO of Omega, commented: “I am delighted to announce the launch of the VISITECT® COVID-19 Antigen test. We look forward to updating shareholders on our commercial discussions as they conclude.
“I am pleased to say that we are now producing a wide range of our own tests from our Alva site and we look forward to being notified which test we will produce under the UK Government contract, which will then see us move to production of up to two million tests a week.
“In the meantime, there is much ongoing activity; not only are we producing our own tests, but we are also producing AbC-19 Rapid tests for the UK-RTC in anticipation of forthcoming orders as well as providing additional cassetting and pouching services to the UK Government for other COVID-19 antigen lateral flow tests.”
After initially spiking to highs of 78.90p following today's announcement, Omega's share price is now trading at 74.40, up 1.22%.
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