Unilabs hits five million Covid-19 tests

Geneva, 10 December 2020: Unilabs, the leading European diagnostic provider, today hit an important milestone in its fight against Covid-19, surpassing five million Covid-19 tests across its seventeen countries.

“This is an astonishing achievement and shows the dedication of our teams during this pandemic – on the frontline, across operations, and in our offices,” said Dr Christian Rebhan, Unilabs’ Chief Medical and Operations Officer. ”Working with health authorities, healthcare professionals, and suppliers around the world, we quickly assumed our responsibilities in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Unilabs started large-scale testing in Q1, rapidly increased sampling and testing capacity, and created innovative workflows to minimise risks for patients and staff. Since then, Unilabs has set up more than two hundred drive-throughs and walk-throughs to ensure safe Covid-19 testing, and introduced dedicated zones to allow vulnerable non-Covid patients – the elderly and immuno-suppressed – to continue important routine testing and treatment.

Current testing capacity at Unilabs exceeds 500,000 tests per week, and rising. The majority of the tests conducted are PCR tests, considered the gold standard, since PCR testing can detect even low viral loads in both symptomatic and non-symptomatic patients and therefore allows for timely isolation and treatment.

Unilabs offers a wide range of Covid-19 tests, from PCR-based tests, which identify current infections, to Serology tests, which detect antibodies and are mainly used to indicate past infections. Unilabs has also recently introduced rapid antigen tests, which deliver fast results but only work for symptomatic patients with high viral loads, and are thus not recommended for large-scale population-level screening. 

Unilabs currently performs Covid-19 testing in Czechia, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, and the UK. 

Media contact:

Alistair Hammond, Director of Communications

e: Alistair.Hammond@Unilabs.com 

t: +44 771 773 0441

About Unilabs:

Unilabs is one of Europe’s largest diagnostics companies. It offers a complete range of laboratory, pathology and imaging services for patients all around the world. With 12,700 employees across 150 imaging centres and 250 labs in 17 countries, we perform more than four million lab tests a week – saving lives every single day.