MOSCOW, March 28. /TASS/. Mass production of a supersensitive testing system for the novel coronavirus RNA was launched on March 27 and it is planned to manufacture up to 1,000 such PCR-tests a day, head of Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova said on Friday.

"Today, a production line for PCR-diagnosis testing systems has been launched. One kit will include 50 tests. In the near future it is planned to manufacture 50,000 tests a day. The first batch of supersensitive testing systems has already been supplied to medical establishments in Moscow," the agency’s press service quoted her as saying.

The testing systems was granted state registration on March 6, 2020. "It will take 2.5-3 hours to make one test with the use of the new testing system," the press service added.

A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of 12 million, in late December 2019. Cases of the new coronavirus have also been reported from 160 countries, including Russia, which by now has 1,036, with three deaths and 45 recoveries. According to the latest update, the novel coronavirus cases across the globe have neared 522,000, with more than 23,500 fatalities. The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially described the situation with the novel coronavirus as a pandemic.