Blueprint for Germany: CENTOGENE Provides Coronavirus Testing for German High School

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and ROSTOCK, Germany and BERLIN, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CENTOGENE (Nasdaq: CNTG), a commercial-stage company focused on rare diseases that transforms real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies, announced today that it will be providing its fully validated SARS-CoV-2-PCR tests to students from the Carolinum High School, the largest high school in Neustrelitz, Germany. In doing so, the Company hopes to spearhead a return to normalcy for students ─ creating a blueprint for other schools throughout Germany. This initiative is part of the Company's commitment to support the earliest possible diagnosis of COVID-19 ─ ultimately preventing a further outbreak and a return to normalcy.

Prof. Arndt Rolfs, CEO of CENTOGENE, said, “To overcome this global crisis, we must join forces, and this means early and rapid identification of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals ─ minimizing the spread of COVID-19 and implementing creative models to establish a ‘new normal’ for the education system. Our initiative at the school is the reason that classes can soon return to normalcy, while still prioritizing the health of the students and staff. We see this as our social responsibility to stand up for the students and to define a new normal amid the COVID-19 crisis.”

Henry Tesch, Director of the Carolinum High School in Neustrelitz and former Education Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, added, "Together with CENTOGENE, we have established a reliable and healthy way for normal class sizes to be taught in one room again. Nevertheless, it is of course still important that students do not see a negative test as a free pass to ignore hygiene measures and social distancing.”

Twice a week, students from each grade who have permission to attend school again can be tested for the novel Coronavirus. They will then receive their test results that same afternoon. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the chain of infection and pathways, scientific monitoring of the initiative is planned.

About CENTOGENE

CENTOGENE engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge, including epidemiological and clinical data, as well as innovative biomarkers. CENTOGENE has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with approximately 2.5 billion weighted data points from approximately 500,000 patients representing over 120 different countries as of December 31, 2019.

The Company’s platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic, and genetic data that reflects a global population, and also a biobank of these patients’ blood samples. CENTOGENE believes this represents the only platform that comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which can aid in the identification of patients and improve our pharmaceutical partners’ ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of December 31, 2019, the Company collaborated with over 39 pharmaceutical partners covering over 45 different rare diseases.