COVID-19 Update: FDA Reagent Approval
April 21, 2020
(COLUMBUS, Ohio)—Governor DeWine announced today that a new testing reagent, which is a compound used to determine if COVID-19 is present in a sample, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Because reagents have been extremely limited, Ohio and other states have had limited testing capacity. On Sunday, Governor DeWine spoke with officials at the FDA and asked them to approve new types of reagents to allow Ohio to expand testing. Today, the FDA approved a new version reagent for Thermo Fisher’s testing machines, which are used by most major labs in Ohio.
“This approval will greatly expand our state’s ability to increase our testing capacity,” said Governor DeWine. “We are also working with other companies to make additional reagent kits available so we can continue to ramp up testing in Ohio.”
CURRENT OHIO DATA:
There are 13,725 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Ohio and 557 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths. A total of 2,779 people have been hospitalized, including 838 admissions to intensive care units. In-depth data can be accessed by visiting coronavirus.ohio.gov.
Video of today’s full update, including versions with foreign language closed captioning, can be viewed on the Ohio Channel’s YouTube page.
For more information on Ohio’s response to COVID-19, visit coronavirus.ohio.gov or call 1-833-4-ASK-ODH.