Reditus CEO: Testing equipment will catch new COVID-19 variants

Posted on January 7, 2021
The Pekin-based dermatopathology lab is located at 1805 Riverway Drive. (Facebook/Reditus Laboratories)

 

By Neil Doyle

PEKIN – The CEO of Reditus Laboratories says the facilities testing equipment will catch the new COVID-19 variants.

Dr. Aaron Rossi (left) with State Rep. Dan Brady (R-Bloomington). (Facebook/Reditus Laboratories)

“With the new machine we brought in (Illumina NextSeq), it looks at the whole entire picture within a sample,” said Dr. Aaron Rossi. “So instead of just getting a targeted result when your looking at SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) for instance, we’re able to look at the whole platform and the whole library per say of the actual virus, or viral loads, or viruses within the sample.”

Rossi said the new platform will be ready to use in about three weeks.

According to the CDC, the COVID-19 variant from the United Kingdom is 70% more contagious and has been identified in the United States. As of Wednesday, state health officials said the variant had not yet been detected in Illinois.

“It does concern me personally that it is more contagious just for the simple fact that we don’t want to continue to overwhelm the health care system,” Rossi said.

He said while the new variant will increase the number of COVID cases, there is no evidence that it causes more severe disease. But he added that what is known about the variant could change as more data emerges.

A new variant also has been detected in South Africa. The CDC is recommending people continue to wear a mask, socially distance, and wash hands often.

Reditus Laboratories, based in Pekin, processes COVID-19 tests from the Interstate Center in Bloomington, Illinois State University, and Illinois Wesleyan University. The lab has processed about 1.4 million COVID-19 tests across Illinois since April.

Neil Doyle can be reached at [email protected]

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