Vingroup to present COVID-19 breath testing system to Health Ministry

Conglomerate Vingroup presents the token of the COVID-19 breath testing system to the Health Ministry (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – Local conglomerate Vingroup has successfully reached a deal with
Singaporean firm to bring to Vietnam a breath testing system
costing over 460 billion VND (20 million USD).

Comprising 30
testing machines and disposable mouthpieces capable of collecting 2 million
samples, the system will be handed over to the Ministry of Health (MoH) upon
its arrival in the country.

The BreFence™ Go
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.

has to
date contributed close to 2.29 trillion VND 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 COVID-19 outbreaks./.