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Korea faces soaring demand for at-home COVID-19 test kits
An employee at a convenience store in Seoul organizes at-home COVID-19 test kits on the shelf, Jan. 9. Korea Times file
By Lee Kyung-min
By Lee Kyung-min
Korea's three at-home COVID-19 test kit makers are rushing to increase production capacity to meet soaring market demand amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, according to industry officials, Thursday. The three government-certified makers are SD Biosensor, Humasis and Rapigen.
The explosive demand is being amplified further by the surge in confirmed infection cases in the wake of the Lunar New Year holiday long weekend that ended Wednesday, as a large number of people traveled across the county to visit their families in remote areas.
Some had feared initially that the acute demand would translate into a nationwide shortage of test kits, as implied by the per-kit price quadrupling in the last week of January. But the concern has largely dissipated, thanks to the makers' around-the-clock operation and increases in production capacity.
“We have been and will continue increasing manufacturing capacity to meet soaring demand,” said an official of SD Biosensor based in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
“Our annual production capacity was 250 million as of February last year, and we have since expanded the relevant facilities to produce more test kits faster.”
Helping anchor the stable supply of the key product was a recent visit to Gyeonggi-based Humasis by the food and drug safety head on Feb. 2, the last day of the three-day national holiday.
“We are very grateful to the firm employees who are working over the Lunar New Year holiday for the stable supply of the test kits," Food and Drug Safety Minister Kim Gang-lip said at the facility in Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province.
“Please spare no effort to ensure that high-quality test kits are supplied to community health centers, medical clinics and pharmacies in time.”
The ministry said that the public health authorities are overseeing the manufacture and distribution of some 6.86 million kits needed at 256 community health centers nationwide over the next two weeks and 9.6 million to be released for sale at pharmacies nationwide.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases came to 22,907, Thursday, up from 20,270 a day earlier. The daily case tally has been increasing continually from 16,096 on Jan. 27.