Turkey will in the coming days export locally produced coronavirus detection kits that can produce results in about two hours to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the Turkish health minister said on Friday, according to Reuters.
China’s coronavirus outbreak has shown no sign of abating, with health authorities reporting more than 5,000 new cases on Friday.
Earlier this month Turkey evacuated 42 people from China’s city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and kept them quarantined for 14 days while authorities ran tests.
Speaking in Ankara after the quarantine period expired with no detected infections, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Turkey’s coronavirus detection kit has a 99.6 percent accuracy rate.
The kit was produced in line with data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and can obtain results in 90-120 minutes, a bit less than equivalents in Germany or France, he said.
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan requested some 10,000 kits each, and Turkey will begin exporting them in the coming days, Koca said.
Ankara has said there are no known cases of the virus in Turkey, and authorities are using thermal cameras at airports as well as other protective measures. Turkish Airlines suspended flights to China after the WHO said it was declaring the outbreak a global emergency.