A Berlin Biotech Company Got a Head Start on Coronavirus Tests

Shortly after New Year’s, Olfert Landt started seeing news reports of a strange disease spreading in China. The German scientist, who’s developed tests for ailments ranging from swine flu to SARS, sensed an opportunity—and a new mission. He spent the next few days quizzing virologists at Berlin’s Charité hospital and scouring the internet for more information on what soon became known as the novel coronavirus, and by Jan. 10 he’d introduced a viable test kit. His phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. “Everyone here is putting in 12- to 14-hour shifts,” the ponytailed Landt says as he rushes through the corridors of TIB Molbiol Syntheselabor GmbH, the Berlin biotech company he started three decades ago. “We’re nearing our limit.”

In the past two months, Landt and his staff at the company’s production facility—a former industrial building just south of the disused Tempelhof airport—have produced 40,000 coronavirus diagnostic kits, enough for about 4 million individual tests. TIB has reoriented its business toward coronavirus, running its machines through the night and on weekends to make the kits, which sell for about €160 ($180) apiece. As orders have poured in from the World Health Organization, national health authorities, and laboratories in some 60 countries, TIB’s revenue in February tripled from the same month in 2019.