The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted diagnostics company Roche emergency approval to start selling a high-speed coronavirus test. The green light from regulators comes amid concerns that difficulty screening large segments of the U.S. population has allowed the virus to spread.

The test, designed to run on a computerized diagnostic system developed by Roche, will be available immediately and can be run on machines already in place at more than 100 laboratories across the U.S., according to Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland. One version of the device can test more than 4,000 patients a day, while a second can perform nearly 1,500 tests, the company announced.

“Providing quality, high-volume testing capabilities will allow us to respond effectively to what the World Health Organization has characterized as a pandemic,” Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker said in a statement…continued .
[Source: CBS News]