Provider of science services Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc (NYSE:TMO) has said that its COVID-19 diagnostic tests can accurately detect the new COVID-19 variant Omicron, Reuters news agency reported on Monday.

In a statement the company said that its TaqPath COVID-19 assays can report accurate results even in the case where one of the gene targets is impacted by a mutation.

Mark Stevenson, COO at Thermo Fisher Scientific, was quoted as saying in an interview: "This assay can be used not only to successfully detect COVID-19 but... it also be used as a proxy for the [Omnicron] variant."

Stevenson added that this is the only COVID-19 diagnostic test authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration and currently in use by health systems that can be used to indicate if a case is caused by the Omnicron variant.

Test samples must still be sent to a lab for sequencing to confirm that the case was caused by Omnicron and not another variant with similar features, such as the Alpha variant, Stevenson stated.