Put to the Test

Seegene’s CEO Chun Jong-yoon can’t make his Covid-19 tests fast enough to fill demand.

- Zinone Lee

On December 31, the first news reached South Korea of a cluster of coronavirus infections in Wuhan. Seegene’s chief executive Chun Jong-yoon, 63, was already anticipating the worst, as the risk of a global outbreak was high. Chun immediately ceased all other work at his Seoul-based biotech firm, Seegene, and ordered his lead researcher and staff to focus entirely on producing a diagnostic kit for the Covid-19. “Development needed to be very fast,” Chun says. “Before the situation became more serious, we had to be prepared.”

In two weeks Seegene had developed its test, the Allplex 2019-nCoV Assay. On January 27, following the first confirmed case in South Korea, Chun received an urgent call from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC); the agency requested the testing kit for review and soon learned that Seegene’s development process aligned closely with the guidelines of the KCDC.

On February 12, the KCDC approved Seegene’s kit for use. Such go-aheads typically take at least six months; European health authorities gave approval five days earlier. “It was an urgent matter so it was important to respond quickly,” Chun says. “The fact that the KCDC approved this in two weeks was unprecedented.”

It was the availability of Seegene’s test kits, along with the government’s rapid response to do massive testing and other measures, that helped South Korea contain the spread of Covid-19. In a country of 51 million, South Korea has recorded less than 10,000 cases, below the figure for Switzerland, with a population of 8.6 million.