Health Ministry receives COVID-19 breath testing system from Vingroup

(fourth from left) receives the token of the from (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – Minister of Health
Nguyen Thanh Long on June 4 received a COVID-19 breath testing system costing over 460
billion VND (20 million USD) donated by domestic conglomerate Vingroup.

The system comprises 30 testing machines and
disposable mouthpieces capable of collecting 2 million samples.

The BreFence™ Go COVID-19 breath testing system quickly produces results in an accurate and
non-invasive manner. The test has received provisional authorisation from
Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority (HSA).

It operates by detecting volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) in a person’s exhaled breath that are produced by biochemical
reactions in human cells.

A person need only blow into a disposable one-way
valve mouthpiece connected to a high-precision breath sampler. The exhaled
breath is collected and fed into a cutting-edge mass spectrometer for measurement.

A proprietary software algorithm analyses the VOCs
biomarkers and generates results in less than a minute, with an accuracy rate
of 90 percent.

At the handover ceremony, Long highly appreciated
Vingroup’s assistance to the health sector’s fight against the COVID-19
pandemic over the past year as well as in public health care in general.

Vingroup has to date contributed close to
2.29 trillion VND (some 99.45 million USD) to the country’s COVID-19 fight.

Of particular note, it presented 4 million doses
of vaccine costing nearly 500 billion VND to the MoH, and provided 20 billion
VND for clinical trials of the homegrown candidate vaccine COVIVAC, which is
being developed by the ministry’s Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals
(IVAC).

The group also donated medical supplies worth
30 billion VND to help Bac Giang and Bac Ninh provinces cope with spreading
outbreaks./.