The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency authorization to Abbott Laboratories for a $ 5 rapid response COVID-19 antigen test that is about the size of a credit card.
The inexpensive, rapid-response test could be administered in an office of a physician as a school nurse and uses technology similar to pregnancy tests at home. It gives results in about 15 minutes.
The emergency release comes as demand grows for greater access to diagnostic tools for COVID-19 that deliver results in minutes, rather than days to help contain faster infections.
Abbott ABT,
said Wednesday that it plans to ship tens of millions of newly approved tests in September, with plans to increase production to 50 million tests in October. If the company can do this, the total for October would be about double the number of tests in July in the US.
Some public health officials and laboratory directors say that rapid rapid tests that can be produced at a lower cost are a major factor in the country’s ability to return to work and school.
An extended version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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