US home testing gets scaled up under deal

The White House said on Monday the government awarded a $230 million contract to scale up production of a COVID-19 home test recently authorized by US regulators, as the deadliest month yet of the pandemic drew to a close with some signs of progress.

The contract will allow the Australian company Ellume, which manufactures the test, to quickly increase its production and create a manufacturing plant in the United States, said Andy Slavitt, the White House COVID-19 senior adviser.

The test kit allows users to swab themselves at home and check their status in about 20 minutes. It's one of only three tests that consumers can use themselves, and the only one available without a doctor's prescription.

"Ellume has been ramping up manufacturing and will ship 100,000 test kits per month to the US from February through July," he said. "That's good but it's obviously not where we'll need to be."

Slavitt said the test can detect the coronavirus with 95 percent accuracy within roughly 15 minutes. The price of the test is about $30, but "costs will come down, only when we can get to that mass production and scale", he said.

For months, health experts stressed the need for fast, widespread home testing so people can screen themselves and avoid contact with others if they have an infection.

But the vast majority of tests still require a nasal swab performed by a health worker that must be processed at high-tech laboratories.

The announcement of the test comes as the US death toll climbed past 440,000 with more than 95,000 lives lost in January, the deadliest month yet of the coronavirus in the country, data from Johns Hopkins University said.

As the calendar turned to February on Monday, the number of US citizens in the hospital with COVID-19 fell below 100,000 for the first time in two months.

Downward trend

New cases are averaging about 148,000 per day, down from almost a quarter-million in mid-January.

"While the recent decline in cases and hospital admissions are encouraging, they are counterbalanced by the stark reality that in January we recorded the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in any month since the pandemic began," said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the fight against the deadly coronavirus, at least nine senior New York State Health Department officials have resigned or retired in recent months because they believe they have been sidelined and treated disrespectfully by Governor Andrew Cuomo's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The New York Times.

Ai Heping in New York and agencies contributed to this story.