MANILA &bull The Philippines has confirmed domestic transmission of the new, highly contagious British variant of the coronavirus, prompting President Rodrigo Duterte to abandon a plan to allow some minors to go outside their homes.

 

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told news channel ANC yesterday: " Right now, we have local transmission where this individual or these cases with the variant have already infected their community, their family."

 

Citing the British variant, Mr Duterte said he had scrapped a plan to allow children aged 10 to 14 in low-risk areas to go outside their home starting Feb 1.

 

The Philippines has imposed some of the world' s toughest restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus infections, including internal travel bans. Since March last year, minors have been officially prohibited from leaving their home.

 

" I am afraid because this new strain strikes the young children," Mr Duterte said late on Monday.

 

" Go back to your homes... and besides, they' re good just with the TV. They can glue their attention to the TV the whole day."

 

The Philippine government had hoped that easing restrictions on children might boost economic activity, after a year when growth is expected to have contracted 8.5 per cent to 9.5 per cent.

 

Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said this month that 50 per cent of the economy was driven by " family activities" , and without them, the economy could not recover.

 

The Philippines' caseload of more than half a million infections is one of the highest in South-east Asia.

 

Mr Duterte' s administration also has been criticised for its slowness in procuring Covid-19 vaccines, with the bulk of them not expected to start arriving until the second half of the year.

 

Biolidics has launched a SARS-CoV-2 antigen test kit, the " ClearEpi SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Test Kit" (the " ClearEpi ART" ). The raw materials of the ClearEpi ART are sourced from JOYSBIO (Tianjin) Biotechnology Co, Ltd, with whom the Company has a distribution agreement with, and the ClearEpi ART are packaged and labelled by third party manufacturers.

 

The Board is also pleased to announce that it had, on 25 January 2021, received confirmation for the CE marking (registration number: DE/CA70/40838-160662 for the ClearEpi ART (the " CE Marking&rdquo ). 

 

The CE Marking is a notification process which enables the Company to market and sell the ClearEpi ART in the European Union (" EU" ). 

 

The CE Marking indicates that the ClearEpi ART complies with the relevant EU safety, health and environmental protection requirements which enables the ClearEpi ART to be marketed in the EU.

 

It should be noted that antigen rapid test kits, such as the ClearEpi ART, are different from the serology rapid test kits for the detection of COVID-19 antibodies that are currently being sold by the Company (please refer to the Company' s announcement, among others, dated 30 March 2020). 

 

Specifically, serology tests (administered via blood draw) seek to detect antibodies that usually appear in patients during the recovery phase of COVID-19, whereas antigen tests (administered via nasal swab from the lower part of the nose) seek to detect viral proteins (i.e. antigens) in patients during the acute phase of COVID-19.

 

Serology tests and antigen tests are beneficial for their ability to produce test results quickly and at lower costs as compared to the more expensive polymerase chain reaction (" PCR" ) tests which typically take between one to two days to produce test results. In this regard, given the growing demand for antigen rapid test kits, the Company has decided to further expand its COVID-19 test kit offerings to customise and manufacture its own range of antigen test kits.

 

However, serology tests and antigen tests have lower sensitivity and specificity than PCR tests which are administered via nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swabs to obtain respiratory samples. For this reason, the results from the ClearEpi ART are only for clinical reference and should not be the only basis for clinical diagnosis and treatment. The clinical management of patients should be considered in combination with their symptoms, physical signs, medical history, other laboratory tests, therapeutic reaction, and epidemiological information.

 

Barring unforeseen circumstances, and given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the launch of the ClearEpi ART and/or the CE Marking are expected to contribute positively to the revenue of the Group for the current financial year ending 31 December 2021. However, the Company is unable to quantify such financial impact as the sales uptake of the ClearEpi ART cannot be determined as at the date of this announcement.