It is am extremely stark example of the value of maintaining manufacturing capacity in your country. Korea can makes tests, so they have tests.
Seegene, a company that makes Covid-19 testing equipment is in Korea. They just needed approval and to ramp up manufacturing. For most countries, like the US, we don't have the manufacturing ability anymore, so we have to go beg and buy tests while we figure how to make again. Seegene alone has been responsible for 80% of the tests in Korea.
Not so long ago, East Asia was hit by another epidemic virus. So they are better prepared than many other countries. They have reserved workforce, researchers, and labs to deal with it in South Korea. Therefore, they were able to mass produce fast test kits so quickly.
The population is also better prepared for this situation. They still remember it and know they have to follow all the advice coming from government and health experts.
Even before the spread of Covid-19 outside China, all East Asians started to use face masks. I'm not saying mask helped them, I mean that just shows how their society still remembers the last time that they were hit by a virus.
Afaik, the shortage in US is mainly of raw materials and commodity items like pipettes. How did Seegene ramp up its raw material pipeline so quickly. Really fascinating success.
Korea has a broad swath of medical manufacturing capacity. A large part of the supply chain is already there, so it is easier for them to ramp up. You can double or triple output just by putting more shifts into the factories. Then you start retooling, repurposing to really ramp up.
The US could have ramped up production, but politics and regulation prevented it. The CDC and FDA prevented any private companies from producing their own tests and in the meantime the CDC made their own small batch of tests that weren’t even accurate. If the president had taken the outbreak seriously we could have begun test production immediately, which is what South Korea did the moment they heard about the outbreak. This is largely due to systems put in place during and after the SARS and MERS outbreaks.
Seegene, a company that makes Covid-19 testing equipment is in Korea. They just needed approval and to ramp up manufacturing. For most countries, like the US, we don't have the manufacturing ability anymore, so we have to go beg and buy tests while we figure how to make again. Seegene alone has been responsible for 80% of the tests in Korea.