Under the Biden administration, the Department of Defence and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have awarded an Australian-based company $230m 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 the White House’s Covid response team, announced on Monday the million-dollar deal struck between the Biden administration and Ellume during a press briefing.
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 after using.
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.