SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) - Q&M Dental Group's 51 per cent subsidiary Acumen Diagnostics has emerged as one of six awardees of an open tender exercise by Singapore's Health Promotion Board (HPB) for the provision of Covid-19 swab and testing services.

In a bourse filing on Tuesday (May 18), Q&M said Acumen had participated in the exercise on March 1.

As one of HPB's panel service providers to provide swabbing and testing services, Acumen will be able to leverage its expertise to assist the government in its efforts to actively disrupt further community spread of the virus, added the group.

Q&M said in its statement: "The group is proud that Acumen has been given an opportunity to contribute to Singapore's continued efforts in battling the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

"Given the recent spike in community cases of Covid-19 and heightened safe management measures imposed by the Singapore government which took effect on May 16, 2021, there is a greater need for increased contact tracing efforts and rapid response testing to detect, track and isolate potential Covid-19 cases."

Established in April last year, Acumen Diagnostics is a joint venture between Q&M and the founder of Acumen Research Laboratories, Ong Siew Hwa. The medical technology firm has a Covid-19 clinical lab where polymerase chain reaction tests for Covid-19 are processed.

CGS-CIMB in March estimated that Q&M's new Covid-19 diagnostic testing segment and the sale of test kits via Acumen could contribute about 38 per cent of the group's core net profits for FY2021-2022.

Shares of the group were trading at 70.5 cents, up 3.5 cents or 5.2 per cent, at 9.18am on Wednesday after the announcement.