Gives leaf:
Researchers from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the University of São Paulo (ICB-USP) were able to isolate and cultivate in the laboratory the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 obtained from the first two Brazilian patients diagnosed with the disease at Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein.
The viruses will be distributed to research groups and public and private clinical laboratories across the country with the aim of expanding the capacity for carrying out diagnostic tests and advancing studies on how the disease is caused and spread.
“The availability of samples of this virus cultured in cells will allow clinical laboratories to have positive controls to validate the diagnostic tests, in order to ensure that they really work,” Edison Luiz Durigon, professor at ICB-USP and project coordinator, told Agência Fapesp , Supported by Fapesp.
According to the researcher, the lack of these virus samples to be used as positive controls was one of the factors that limited the diagnosis of coronavirus in Brazil.
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