Healthcare firm Abbott has secured emergency use authorisation (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its fastest available molecular point-of-care test to detect COVID-19, a novel coronavirus.
Abbott’s fastest available molecular point-of-care test holds the capacity to deliver positive results within five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.
The test will be conducted on Abbott’s company’s ID NOW platform, which offers fast results in different settings such as physicians’ offices, urgent care clinics, and hospital emergency departments.
The small, lightweight and portable ID NOW platform applies molecular technology, which is valued by clinicians and the scientific community for its high degree of accuracy, said the company.
Abbott will supply ID NOW COVID-19 tests from next week to healthcare providers for use in urgent care settings in the US.
Abbott said that the company is coordinating with the regulator to deploy the tests in highly impacted areas.
The ID NOW is a molecular point-of-care platform for Influenza A & B, Strep A and RSV testing in the US
The ID NOW, which was first introduced in 2014, is a molecular point-of-care platform for Influenza A & B, Strep A and RSV testing in the US. It is a rapid, instrument-based and isothermal system for the qualitative detection of infectious diseases.
The system’s advanced isothermal nucleic acid amplification technology enables to deliver molecular results within minutes, helping clinicians to make evidence-based clinical decisions during a patient visit.
Abbott president and chief operating officer Robert Ford said: “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,
“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.”
Recently, Abbott secured EUA status from the FDA for its molecular test, which will be conducted on the m2000 RealTime system, for the detection of novel coronavirus.
