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President Donald Trump Announced on Monday, Sept. 28, 2020, at the White House, Abbott and SD Biosensor agreed with the Charitable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to produce 150 million rapid Coronavirus tests that will be distributed to people in both poor and rich countries.
The Access to COVID-19 tools (ACT) Accelerate is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
The $5 tests would benefit 133 countries, including Latin America, which was hit the hardest by the pandemic. The tests resemble the pregnancy test. Two blue-lines are positive for the virus. The cheaper Antigen test identifies the spiky protein on the surface of the virus. They could be used in schools, universities, and workplaces. Low and middle-income countries will receive 20 percent of the production
, and 80 percent will rest.
The test manufactured by Abbott Laboratories called BinaxNow is painless and can yield results within minutes.
At a news conference on Monday, Director-General of the World Health Organization(WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated, ” The new easy-to-use and highly portable test will provide results in 15-30 minutes instead of hours or days. This is a vital addition to testing capacity and especially important in areas of high transmission.”
“This will allow the expansion of testing, in hard-to-reach areas that do not have laboratory facilities or enough trained health workers to carry out tests,” Dr. Tedros added.
A member of Trump’s Coronavirus task force ADM Brett Giroir demonstrated using one of the credit-card size tests.
Written by Jessica Letcher
Edited by Cathy Milne-Ware
Sources:
BBC: Coronavirus: New global test will give results ‘in minutes’
The New York Times: Trump Announces Plan to Ship 150 Million Rapid Coronavirus Tests; Katherine J. Wu
The Guardian: Covid-19 tests that give results in minutes to be rolled out across world; Sarah Boseley
Features Image Courtesy of Phil Murphy’s Flickr’s Page -Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of NIAID’s Flickr’s Page – Creative Commons License
