LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Medical diagnostics company Omega announced on Monday that it has CE-marked Mologic's lateral flow antigen test for Covid-19, to be sold for professional use under its 'Visitect' brand.

The AIM-traded firm said the test would provide healthcare professionals with an accurate rapid test for the detection of the nucleoprotein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in respiratory swabs.

It said that, having started technology transfer late in 2020, it had CE-marked the product and was now in the process of completing marketing launch for commercial roll-out, which was expected to start in April.

The company said it was already in discussion with a number of potential commercial partners looking to order the test post-launch.

It added that it was "well on its way" to establishing a lateral flow production capacity of about two million tests per week by the end of April from its Alva facility in Scotland.

That production capacity would be used to produce the Visitect-branded antigen test for sale to third-party commercial customers.

Use of the company's weekly production capacity for the supply of antigen tests under the Department of Health and Social Care contract, and the supply of other tests, was expected to have a "significant" impact on the future performance of the business.

It added that while volumes were unquantified, it was likely to result in "substantial" revenue growth in the financial year beginning 1 April.

"This is an exciting and important next step in our Covid-19 strategy as we now have the ability to supply both antigen and antibody lateral flow tests not only to the UK government but also to our commercial partners," said chief executive officer Colin King.

"Having both tests available and having built our production capacity allows us to adjust our capacity to meet the demands of the pandemic.

"We look forward with confidence that the coming year ahead will be truly transformational for Omega."

At 1207 GMT, shares in Omega Diagnostics Group were up 1.42% at 89.25p.

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