The latest shipment is part of an ongoing effort to deploy a total of 300 of the advanced kits made by American company Quidel throughout the country, as announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kish in October.
Departing from Quidel HQ in San Diego, the transport plane landed in Israel a few days ago. The shipment of 70 devices was then sent to the Sofia Israel logistical center in Modi'in Illit, and is expected to be distributed to retirement homes, medical clinics and health funds, as well as to IDF bases, Israel Police and Prison Services.
Sofia kits, based on a pioneering new technology, which has already been approved by the FDA, allow the administration of about 40 coronavirus tests per hour and provides results within 15 minutes, without the need to send findings to a lab, making the process much faster and easier, logistically speaking.
Some 50,000 Sofia devices are already being used throughout the US. Israel is one of the first countries to receive the advanced technology, with over 60,000 tests administered in the past few weeks, and is expected to reach 200,000 in the coming weeks.
Sofia kits in Israel have been connected to the Health Ministry's systems and have already been deployed in more than 100 testing points.
Sofia is the first rapid test kit to operate by searching for coronavirus antigens. According to the Sofia Israel Company, the test has a 96.7% "sensitivity" rate and a 100% "specificity" rate.
However, concerns about the accuracy of the innovative rapid test kits have recently surfaced, with a lab workers association reporting that, according to their tests, the success rate of Sofia devices was only about 84%.