Nordic Life Science 1
Kári Stefánsson, CEO, deCode Genetics ”Overall, c
ompanies that can help increase the capacity of hospitals and labs with corona-related equipment and labs are being explored for opportunities in Denmark. The government is also exploring opportunities with the labs of e.g. Novo Nordisk and University of Copenhagen to increase the capacity of testing etc. In my opinion, this is all great news, and feeds well into solutions that address the challenges that change rapidly in the growth of the pandemic,” says Per Spindler. Every Nordic country has great examples of public and private initiatives, collaborations and funding opportunities for research related to the new coronavirus. “Since the novel coronavirus came to Norway, we have seen a willingness to test widely, to gather health data and to understand the virus. The infrastructure, which has now been set up to assemble and analyze data, can also be used for future research in cancer. We are further motivated by the fact that more people are acknowledging the importance of understanding diseases and our immune system in order to develop new treatments,” says Ketil Widerberg. 32 In Iceland, a large scale COVID-19 testing of the general population has begun, intended to gather insight into the actual prevalence of the virus in the community. Iceland, which has a population of around 364,000, has the unique position of having very high testing capabilities. The free of charge testing is performed by the Icelandic medical research company deCODE Genetics. “The screening tells us where the virus is and the sequencing tells us how it differs between the places where it is and how it continues to mutate,” says Kári Stefánsson, CEO of deCode. As of March 25th, 11,727 individuals had been tested by deCODE or the University Hospital of Iceland and around 737 people had been diagnosed with COVID-19. ”The large scale testing by deCode Genetics among the general population will hopefully inform improved decision making throughout the current crisis, and more importantly, serve a useful purpose for how the world prepares for similar events in the future,” says Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Minister of Health in Iceland. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG PHOTO CHRISTOPHER LUND