Under the Biden administration, the Department of Defence and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have awarded an Australian-based company $230 million (£168 million) to scale up the manufacturing of its at-home Covid test.
Ellume’s at-home tests, which received emergency use authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December, were 95 per cent accurate and provided users with Covid-19 results within 15 minutes.
Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden’s Covid response team, announced the million-dollar deal struck with Ellume during a press briefing on Monday.
“They could be used if you feel symptoms of Covid, and also for screening for people without symptoms so they could safely go to work, to school, and to events,” Mr Slavitt said. “After you take the swab, you put the sample into a digital analyser, which will send a result to your smartphone in about 15 minutes.”
The money from this deal would scale-up the manufacturing of the at-home test so it could be more accessible to Americans. The test is offered over the counter at $30 per kit and sends the results to one’s phone.
With the money, Ellume would be able to produce 19 million at-home testing kits per month by the end of the year, 8.5 million of which were guaranteed for the federal government, Mr Slavitt said. The company would ship 100,000 at-home testing kits to the United States per month from February to July.
When the company received emergency use authorisation in December, it was manufacturing only about 16,000 tests per day.
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This announcement comes following months of pleas from health officials for testing to be easy and accessible to the public as a way to respond to the pandemic. Ellume’s at-home kit is one of three currently available, but its the only one that doesn’t require a doctor’s prescription to purchase.
The Unites States has prioritised vaccine manufacturing, distributing, and administering in the last month to respond to the pandemic. But an emphasis is still needed on testing so residents can isolate themselves if they test positive.
Besides increasing manufacturing in the millions for its at-home tests, Ellume said on Monday it would use the funding to construct a US-based plant. The company did not reveal a timeframe for when this would all take place.
fistofthefuture on February 1st, 2021 at 17:36 UTC »
lmao anyone remember the press conference that Trump gave early on with a home test kit that would be "in everyone's home next month" and never came? And the box kept blowing off the table?
Edit: https://youtu.be/WlHAFHXpt04
from u/KyngGeorge
ganymede_boy on February 1st, 2021 at 17:11 UTC »
Already WAY more than Trump did in all of February 2020:
February 1st: golf
February 2nd: golf
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 7: To Bob Woodward: “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed." "It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff."
February 10: Trump campaign rally.
February 15: Democratic Senators propose emergency funding bill to prepare for virus.
February 15: golf
February 19: Trump campaign rally.
February 19: “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along”
February 20: Trump campaign rally.
February 21: Trump campaign rally.
February 23: “We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
February 26: “The 15 {cases in the US} within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: Trump on way to campaign rally. “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
February 29: ”This is their new hoax," he said, referring to the coronavirus.
February 29: “STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus” –U.S. Surgeon General - original tweet deleted
kneeco28 on February 1st, 2021 at 16:51 UTC »
"Things that should have happened in March 2020" for $1,000, please, Ken.