Cold and flu season may still be several months away in the northern hemisphere, but diagnostic test makers are taking no chances.
Both Hologic and Thermo Fisher Scientific on Monday unveiled new additions to their existing slates of respiratory virus assays. The new test panels look for a handful of common viruses at once—such as COVID-19, the flu, the common cold, respiratory syncytial virus, pneumonia and more—and are initially launching with CE mark approval in the European Union.
Hologic is rolling out two molecular diagnostic panels at once, both of which can detect the coronavirus, RSV and flu A and B.
One version of the test is designed to run on Hologic’s Panther Fusion system, while the other can be analyzed by its Novodiag platform, which the testing giant inherited in its acquisition of Mobidiag last summer. Both diagnostics require nasopharyngeal swab samples and can begin returning results within one to three hours.
“As we move into the next phase of COVID, it is important that we evolve our assays to support our customers with tests that enable them to differentiate between the multiple respiratory pathogens as easily as possible,” said Jan Verstreken, group president of Hologic’s international division.
The new Panther Fusion test joins several others designed to run on the platform that also look for multiple respiratory viruses at once. Those include a panel for RSV and flu A and B; one to test for adenovirus, human metapneumovirus and rhinovirus; and another that detects all four types of parainfluenza, which can cause croup, bronchitis, bronchiolitis and pneumonia.
Thermo Fisher, meanwhile, rolled out just one supersized molecular diagnostic. The TaqPath Respiratory Viral Select Panel scans patient samples for adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, rhinovirus, enterovirus and parainfluenza, the viruses that cause respiratory illnesses like the common cold, bronchiolitis, croup, pneumonia and other flu-like conditions.
The test runs on Thermo Fisher’s Applied Biosystems PCR analyzers and returns results in about three hours. The analyzers can run up to 94 of the panels at once.
“As the world continues to grapple with living alongside COVID-19, it is important to know that there [is] a myriad of other respiratory viruses that can also cause serious illness,” said Manoj Gandhi, M.D., Ph.D., the company’s senior medical director of genetic testing solutions. “Offering information on these other common respiratory viruses in a single test empowers labs to detect them quickly and efficiently so that the right treatment approach can be selected, which can help save patients’ lives.”