Novacyt shares (LON:NCYT) have jumped more than 45% after it received approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for it’s COVID-19 testing kits.

The Novacyt share price rose as much as 48% to 185p by mid day trading in London.

Last week, the UK Investor Magazine highlighted Novacyt as one of the few companies providing investors with any positivity during the coronavirus crisis and today’s announcement is a significant milestone for the company.

The FDA approval means Novacyt kits are now allowed to be used in US hospitals and laboratories to test for COVID-19.

Graham Mullis, Chief Executive Officer of Novacyt, commented:

“The US FDA EUA authorization is another important endorsement of the performance and quality of our COVID-19 test and demonstrates once again Novacyt’s growing role in tackling this pandemic.”

“We are committed to providing clinicians around the world with our COVID-19 test and delighted we can now support the US market.”

Novacyt has also recently received orders from Public Health England to the tune of £1 million and said last week total orders for COVID-19 had surpassed £8 million.

The company gave no indication on potential size of orders from the US but said kits were available for immediate distribution.

To deal with any surge in orders, Novacyt announced its was investing in additional capacity to deal with a predicted demand of 2 million COVID-19 testing kits.