Germany Hunts for New Virus Strains Using 100,000 Donated Tests Bloomberg 1/26/2021 Stefan Nicola
(Bloomberg) Germany has embarked on a push to find out how prevalent the more contagious Covid-19 strains are among those infected, relying on a new test that promises quicker results than genome sequencing.
About two-dozen laboratories in Europe’s biggest economy will re-test thousands of confirmed coronavirus samples this week to scour for the variants that have caused surging infections in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil.
They’re using some 100,000 specially designed PCR tests donated by TIB Molbiol Syntheselabor GmbH, a Berlin-based biotech firm that last year was among the first worldwide to develop kits to detect the coronavirus. The company’s new test, which is also based on the polymerase chain reaction diagnostic method, has been tweaked to identify certain mutations on the virus’s spike protein and can produce results within a couple hours,