RE:Take a Page From ACB....... From a Korea report:
The assembly lines are located upstairs, through stainless-steel airlocks that blast another jet of high-pressure air. There, workers in shiny blue jumpsuits, white shoes, white masks, and blue caps oversee the production of rapid antigen tests that detect proteins expressed by the virus that causes Covid-19. Cheap to produce and delivering results in minutes, such tests are a key component of some proposals for controlling infections until vaccines arrive.
The production process begins with paper. In one room, a machine the length of a pickup truck unrolls a huge white spool of it, dipping the sheet into a bath of reagent chemicals and then feeding it into a drying oven. After being divided into narrow bands, it’s spliced with paper from several other reels, treated with different reagent mixtures, into short pieces that drop with a mechanical hiss into a collection tray before being cut into individual test strips. In another space, robotic arms place each test strip into a plastic housing, then seal it in a black-and-white wrapper to be packed for shipment.
The facility can produce 2.5 million rapid tests per week. They sell for only about $5 each and are destined exclusively for export; with relatively few coronavirus cases and plenty of domestic manufacturing capacity, Korea has more than enough tests for its needs. Getting enough of these kinds of kits into the world, says Osang Chairman Lee Donghyun, should allow “people to quickly get tested at home, or before going to a movie or concert, or even to get a result after spending about an hour in an airport lounge.”