FOX Carolina Exculsive: SC company’s lab to help with rapid COVID-19 testing
August 6, 2020“Supplies are packed inside a mobile clinical lab, which is headed to a company in Anderson County where employees will get rapid COVID-19 tests. ‘We’re trying to do whatever we can to be helpers,’ Lou Kennedy said. She’s the CEO and owner of Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation in Columbia. She along with scientists and researchers created an on-site lab in Columbia for the testing.
“’This allows us to do a nasopharyngeal swab or saliva and we process that into well plates,’ Kennedy said. ‘We can do 384 test at a time with future ramping up numbers.’ She says she wanted to keep employees and their families safe. ‘We can test every day,’ Kennedy said. She then thought of how she and the company could help the entire state. ‘Every four hours we get results from those first 384 tests and we’re able to run 24-7,’ she said. ‘We also have the Avid testing equipment that allows us to pull blood from the patient and do serology testing and those results come back in an hour.’
“FOX Carolina got an exclusive look inside the lab where swabs are analyzed and tests give more insight than positive or negative results. ‘What we want to do is get everything we can tell about the patient’s process through what they’re facing- whether they’re symptomatic, A symptomatic and we can tell that by what the equipment shows us,’ Kennedy said. The company also partners with several universities throughout the state for research, which include the University of South Carolina and Clemson to help with contact tracing and to understand other aspects of the virus. ‘There’s a great sense and spirit and community,’ Kennedy said. To get more information about individual or company rapid COVID-19 testing contact Nephron Pharmaceuticals.”