US partners firm on $232m investment to boost production of At-Home COVID-19 tests

*The US─Ellume Limited’s partnership aims to start factory in the United States for At-Home Coronavirus tests, as the company’s test is cleared for use without a prescription

Alexander Davis | ConsumerConnect

In a move to further enhance capacity in the management of the novel Coronavirus pandemic in the country, the United States Government is investing $231.8 million to fast-track production of At-Home COVID-19 tests that do not require a prescription.

Brisbane, Australia-based test-maker Ellume Limited in a statement Monday, February 1 said it would deliver 8.5 million At-Home tests this year, agency report said.

The company plans to open its first US factory, which will increase global production capacity by at least half a million tests a day from the current rate of 100,000.

Sean Parsons, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ellume, said: “We want to help the US reopen as safely and as quickly as possible.

“We are prioritising our partnership with the US government to mobilise tests quickly.”

The Ellume deal provides an early look at how President Joe Biden plans to expand COVID-19 testing, which is reportedly a perennial problem in the country.

Report indicates earlier efforts at doing so are likely to encounter the same barriers as the Trump administration faced, as test manufacturing can take many months to years to scale up.

It was gathered that a dearth of testing and high prices per test have been major impediments to widespread consumer access.

Ellume’s test received emergency clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) December 2020 for over-the-counter, at-home use, but isn’t yet available in the United States, said the spokeswoman.

The product is a single-use, $30 test that can be self-administered with a nasal swab. It detects proteins on the surface of the coronavirus in 15 minutes, delivering the results to an app.

Ellume was a participant in the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics programme, through which it received about $30 million to scale up manufacturing.

Andy Slavitt, a Senior Adviser to the White House’s COVID-19 effort, at a briefing Monday, said: “Making easier-to-use tests available to every American is a high priority with obvious benefits.”

Slavitt stated manufacturing more tests should bring down costs, “a chicken-and-egg problem that I think we have taken a step to solve today, by creating mass production so that we will have tens of millions of these tests out there.”

According to a spokeswoman, Ellume Limited’s goal is produce 500,000 additional tests daily by the end of 2021.

The company is currently in talks with regional and state leaders on a manufacturing location, she said.

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