South Korea delivers 'game changing' coronavirus testing kits to the US State
New Delhi : The US State of Maryland has received 500,000 coronavirus testing kits from the South Korea. Governor Larry Hogan claimed that the shipment will be "game-changing" to efforts to implement widespread testing.
"It enables us to identify those who are sick and those who have the virus and it can help us isolate them and do our contact tracing," Hogan told a press conference in the state capital Annapolis.
He also mentioned that the testing kits which cost around $9 million would be "an exponential, game-changing step forward on our large-scale testing initiative."
The testing kits have been bought from a company named LabGenomics. The shipment arrived in a Korean Airlines plane at Baltimore-Washington airport on Saturday.
As mentioned by the governor, his mother, who is of South Korea origin, negotiated the deal for the States.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has said there are enough tests for each state to move in to "phase one", ending some stay-at-home restrictions.
Hogan said more than 71,400 tests have been conducted in Maryland, which has a population of six million, and there have been 13,684 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 516 deaths.
