“After receiving the health ministry’s license, we have given a part of the company’s production line to the mass-production of coronavirus kits since early last week and now we are able to produce 80,000 kits at standard levels in low prices (compared to the foreign kits),” Vahid Yunessi, the business manager at Pishtaz Teb company, told FNA on Tuesday.
He added that the firm distributed 10,000 coronavirus test kits to 100 labs across Iran earlier in the day.
Yunessi said that supply to the labs began after his company obtained certificates for the kits from the Iranian Health Ministry.
In addition to the knowledge-based companies and private sector plants across Iran which are working to produce the needed health and hygiene products, including diagnosis kits, the researchers of the defense ministry and Armed Forces have also embarked on efforts to manufacture coronavirus kits.
Late in February, the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics announced that its experts and scientists had made the first indigenized edition of COVID-19 diagnostic kit.
Addressing a session of the National Headquarters for Fighting Coronavirus late on February 28, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said that the Armed Forces are prepared to help the countrymen in any point across the country.
Test kits will be mass produced in the coming days, he said, noting that Defense Ministry has preparedness for establishing mobile hospitals which can be set up in any point in the shortest time.
Also, Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari said earlier this month that researchers and knowledge-based companies have adopted important measures in this short period after the start of the outbreak, adding, “Six contracts for developing coronavirus test kits have been signed.”
He went on to say that kits of three companies have gained the required standards and will be mass-produced and offered till next week, adding, “Developing test kits in this short time by private sector shows the depth of the Iranian biotechnology community’s mastery over the science.”
The coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting over 180 countries and territories around the world. The virus was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. It has so far killed more than 19,000 people and infected over 423,000 others globally.
Iran reported on Tuesday that a total number of 1,934 coronavirus patients have died and 24,811 cases of infection have been identified in the country so far. Meanwhile, 8,931 people have also recovered.
The Iranian foreign ministry declared that despite Washington’s claims of cooperation to transfer drugs to Iran via the new Swiss-launched payment mechanism, the US is troubling the process amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Although US claims that medicines and medical equipment are not under sanctions, they have practically blocked the transfer of Iran’s financial resources in other countries into the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said.
