Sean Parsons, chief executive of Ellume, the Australian manufacturer of a competitor rapid test, said this week that demand was 1,000 times what it had forecast and that it was racing to set up a U.S. But the company is not yet supplying retail stores. authorization for its own rapid test, InteliSwab, long in development. Tang, chief executive of OraSure Technologies, which in the midst of the testing slump in June received emergency F.D.A. “Businesses crave certainty, and pandemics don’t lend certainty to demand,” said Stephen S. Abbott is scrambling to hire back hundreds of workers.Īmerica was notoriously slow in rolling out testing in the early days of the pandemic, and the story of the Abbott tests is a microcosm of the larger challenges of ensuring that the private sector can deliver the tools needed to fight public health crises, both before they happen and during the twists and turns of an actual event.īinaxNOW, a rapid antigen test made by Abbott, can provide results in 15 minutes.Abbott, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens locations have been selling out of the at-home version, and Amazon shows shipping delays of up to three weeks. Yet Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future. But now, amid a new surge in infections, steps the company took to eliminate stock and wind down manufacturing are proving untimely - hobbling efforts to expand screening as the highly contagious Delta variant rages across the country.ĭemand for the 15-minute antigen test, BinaxNOW, is soaring again as people return to schools and offices. plummeted this spring, so did Abbott’s Covid-testing sales. “This is all about money.”Īs virus cases in the U.S. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing, saying it wasn’t their fault. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a work force of 2,000. Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. 29, 2021Ībbott Laboratories’ factory in Westbrook, Maine, a major supplier of coronavirus tests.Ryan David Brown for The New York Timesįor weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for Covid-19 were given a task that shocked them: take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags. is facing a surge in infections with diminished capacity.Published Aug. Maker of Popular Covid Test Told Factory to Destroy Inventory One of the leading producers of rapid tests purged supplies and laid off workers as sales dwindled. Maker of Popular Covid Test Told Factory to Destroy Inventory ( Note: This was published before the holiday surge - they knew we already had a shortage and couldn’t meet demands in the fall) (It’s also possible that the tests were not accurate for delta let alone omicron, who knows…) The Biden administration has pulled more than $2 billion out of programs authorized by Congress for COVID-19 testing, emergency medical supplies and other health needs - and is spending it on shelter for the 45,000 unaccompanied migrant children that have flooded across the US border this year.īiden admin diverts $2B from COVID, health spending to care for migrant kidsĪlso, I think Abbot labs destroyed all those tests over the summer because the white house went all in on vaccination and wanted to just let the virus rip.
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