Mehiläinen, Vita Laboratories and Swedish A23 Lab to cooperate on corona testing of Swedish samples

- The corona situation in Sweden is difficult and the analysis of corona tests is severely congested throughout Sweden. For our part, we want to help manage the corona situation in our neighboring country, both in corona testing and in other health services, says Kristiina Ylinen, Mehiläinen's Director.

- A part of Sweden’s corona samples are analyzed in A23 Lab. Despite our increased capacity, the accelerating need in Sweden has led to a congestion of samples and we decided to take the help offered by Mehiläinen, says Karl Andersson, CEO of the A23 Lab in Sweden.

- Throughout the autumn, Vita has invested in increasing its corona testing capacity. We are proud to be able to quickly offer help from our corona laboratories for the situation in Sweden, says Jukka Hurme, CEO of Vita Laboratories.

Mehiläinen, in cooperation with A23 Lab and Vita Laboratories, will analyze corona samples for Swedish public healthcare and the local Hospital District is responsible for taking corona samples from patients. The samples will be sent to Finland for analysis and the answers will be received in Sweden in a couple of days.

Mehiläinen and A23 Lab have many years of collaboration on the diagnosis of prostate cancer, with the revolutionary Stockholm3 test, the use of which Mehiläinen also develops in an international research project. The existing partnership has made a quick mutual support in corona testing possible.

- In March, A23 Lab helped us at Mehiläinen by setting up analysis of Finnish corona samples. We are now happy to be able to offer the same help to A23 Lab and Sweden. Mehiläinen's testing capacity has been significantly increased, and in addition to Finland's testing needs, we are also able to analyze samples imported from Sweden, says Kristina Hotakainen, Director of Mehiläinen's laboratory services.

During the corona pandemic, Mehiläinen has performed approximately 190,000 corona tests in Finland. The average response time from sampling to arrival of the result is 17 hours. 23% of the samples are analyzed in 6 hours.

Read more about the partners:

Mehiläinen Group is a well-known and highly valued private provider of healthcare and social services in Finland, offering comprehensive high-quality services quickly and smoothly to private, corporate, and municipal customers. Mehiläinen provides help, support, and care for around 1,3 million customers.  Mehiläinen’s services are produced at over 500 locations by more than 21,800 employees and private practitioners.

A23 Lab is a fully owned subsidiary of A3P Biomedical (www.a3pbiomedical.com). A3P Biomedical AB is a Swedish company with a global mission – to radically improve precision in prostate cancer diagnostics and treatment. The company’s leading product is Stockholm3, a clinically and commercially validated blood test for early detection of aggressive prostate cancer. Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, A23 Lab has performed more than 125,000 corona test and is a major provider in the national Swedish effort to provide covid-19 test capacity.

Vita Laboratoriot Oy provides high-quality medical and environmental laboratory services in Helsinki, serving the whole of Finland. Vita is a family business founded in 1994. Vita works closely with the German LADR Group, one of Europe's largest central laboratory companies. Vita has been producing the gold standard Covid-19 PCR diagnostics for Finnish private and public healthcare since April 2020.