NEW YORK – BGI of China and Israeli medical technology company Aid Genomics said on Monday that they have partnered to build an emergency COVID-19 testing laboratory in Gaza.
Both the Israeli and the Palestinian authorities have granted approval for the lab to perform 3,000 COVID-19 tests per day for Gaza residents.
BGI will provide the testing, building on its experience with establishing a coronavirus diagnostic lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak in China, in February, followed by four additional labs in other cities.
Aid Genomics, a subsidiary of the Aid Group based in Rehovot, will provide equipment and personnel for the lab, which is expected to cost several million dollars, and will lead local fundraising efforts. The Mammoth Foundation, a non-profit based in China, and the i-Future Foundation, the philanthropy arm of Aid Group Founder and Chairman Kelvin Wu, have already committed donations of undisclosed amounts.
Aid Group and BGI had been collaborating on cancer genomics for two years, and Aid Group has already supplied hundreds of thousands of BGI coronavirus test kits to Israel.