Abbott announced after the close of the market on Wednesday that its molecular test for COVID-19 has received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Abbott test runs on the company's PCR-based m2000 RealTime System. The company said it would work with health systems and government authorities to distribute additional instruments where needed. Right now, there are more than 175 PCR m2000 instruments in the U.S., each one able to run up to 470 tests in 24 hours.
The company will immediately ship 150,000 tests to its existing customers and it said tests have already been sent to hospital and academic medical center labs in 18 states.
The Abbott Park, Illinois-based company also said it is scaling up production at its U.S. manufacturing location to reach the capacity for 1 million tests per week by the end of the month.
Assays for the coronavirus from Roche, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Hologic, Laboratory Corporation of America, and Quidel have also received EUA designation from the FDA during the past week.
This story first appeared in our sister publication, Genomeweb.
