quick update from my wife's hospital system in DFW, they have received "cartridges" from Abbott that work in the same disagnostic POC machines that are used for flu testing and leadership is determining how to best deploy them. She is told they can run a complete a patient test in 9 minutes and documentation says the machines can run 470 tests in 24 hours.
https://www.contagionlive.com/news/abbott-receives-fda-emergency-use-authorization-for-covid19-test
https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-testing-including-drive-clinics-covid-19-spreads/story?id=69584513
https://www.contagionlive.com/news/abbott-receives-fda-emergency-use-authorization-for-covid19-test
Quote:
MAR 18, 2020 | MICHAELA FLEMING
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization for Abbott's molecular COVID-19 test.
In response to the authorization the company announced that 150,000 of the Abbott RealTime SARS-CoV-2 tests are being shipped within the United States. Tests have already been sent to facilities in 18 states including New York and Washington where the majority of US COVID-19 cases have been recorded.
The tests are utilized on the m2000 RealTime System, a platform which uses polymerase chain reaction technology for rapid diagnosis. More than 175 m2000 systems are used in hospital and laboratories across the United States.
According to Abbott, the systems can run high volumes of up to 470 tests in 24 hours.
The company will also be scaling up production to manufacture 1 million tests per week by the end of March.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-testing-including-drive-clinics-covid-19-spreads/story?id=69584513
Quote:
Traditional testing labs such as Hologic, LabCorp and Abbott -- are working to speed up their existing testing capacity.
Hologic has FDA approval to provide results for coronavirus tests in less than three hours and to process up to 1,150 tests in a 24-hour period.
LabCorp expects to perform 10,000 tests every day and by the end of the month conduct 20,000 per day.
Abbott is scaling up production at its U.S. manufacturing location to reach up to one million tests per week by end of March. Their m2000 RealTime testing system is currently available in hospitals and molecular laboratories and ships 150,000 laboratory tests immediately.