MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. Pilot production of rapid tests for COVID-19 antibodies is expected to be launched in Russia in a span of three weeks when the necessary technological equipment is imported to the country, Albert Rizvanov, director of the Center for Precision and Regenerative Medicine of the Kazan Federal University, who heads a team of researchers working on testing systems for and vaccines against the novel coronavirus, said on Friday.

"We have purchased technological equipment for this production line in Kazan. We hope it will arrive in three weeks. We will install it and produce the first pilot batch that will be used in rolling out the registration procedure," he said in an interview with the 60 Minutes program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

According to Rizvanov, these tests will resemble pregnancy ones. "But instead of urine, it will use a drop of blood and a special solution. Either one or two lines will appear in fifteen minutes," he explained.

The Russian Ministry of Health’s Gamaleya National Research Center Director Alexander Gintsburg said on April 20 that a testing system for coronavirus antibodies would be soon submitted for registration to the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare (Roszdravnadzor). After that, according to him, the center will need about ten days to make sure that there is a certain correlation between the presence of virus-neutralizing antibodies and the inability of the virus to multiply after interacting with them.

To date, a total of 68,622 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 5,568 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 615 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.