The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency authorization on Friday for a new coronavirus test that can deliver results in just 5 minutes and is so small that it can be used nearly anywhere.
Abbott Laboratories announced that their new test is the fastest test in the world, able to deliver “positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.”
“The test will run on the company’s ID NOW™ platform, providing rapid results in a wide range of healthcare settings such as physicians’ offices, urgent care clinics and hospital emergency departments,” Abbott Laboratories said in a statement. “The ID NOW platform is small, lightweight (6.6 pounds) and portable (the size of a small toaster), and uses molecular technology, which is valued by clinicians and the scientific community for its high degree of accuracy. ID NOW is already the most widely available molecular point-of-care testing platform in the U.S. today. ”
“The COVID-19 pandemic will be fought on multiple fronts, and a portable molecular test that offers results in minutes adds to the broad range of diagnostic solutions needed to combat this virus,” said Robert B. Ford, president and chief operating officer, Abbott. “With rapid testing on ID NOW, healthcare providers can perform molecular point-of-care testing outside the traditional four walls of a hospital in outbreak hotspots.” – READ MORE
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