In a potential major Covid-19 testing breakthrough, Abbott Labs announced it has developed a portable and reliable coronavirus test that delivers results in 15 minutes and costs just $5.
North Chicago-based Abbott announced Wednesday that it received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its BinaxNOW test, which is about the size of a credit card. Abbott has also developed a mobile app that allows people to display their test results, which could aid in the reopening of workplaces and schools. The app, called NAVICA, serves as a "temporary digital health pass" with a time stamp of when a person's test was taken.
The company said it plans to ship "tens of millions of tests" in September, and will ramp up to 50 million tests a month at the beginning of October.
Abbott likened its new test to a pregnancy test, delivering results in 15 minutes with a simple marker on the card indicating positive or negative results. A health care professional uses a nasal swab to get a sample, and then places the sample into the test card to obtain the results.
Abbott says the test correctly diagnoses an infection 97.1% of the time, and correctly returns a negative result with 98.5% accuracy, based on data submitted to the FDA from a clinical study.
"We intentionally designed the BinaxNOW test and NAVICA app so we could offer a comprehensive testing solution to help Americans feel more confident about their health and lives," Robert B. Ford, president and chief executive officer of Abbott, said in a statement. "BinaxNOW and the NAVICA app give us an affordable, easy-to-use, scalable test, and a complementary digital health tool to help us have a bit more normalcy in our daily lives."
Abbott, which has provided more than 27 million Covid-19 tests in the U.S. to date, was named among Chicago Inno's Crisis Innovators to watch.
