New Test Can Diagnose COVID-19 in as Little as Five Minutes

Abbott announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the fastest available molecular point-of-care test for the detection of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), delivering 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.
 
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 United States 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.”
 
Abbott will be making ID NOW COVID-19 tests available next week to healthcare providers in urgent care settings in the United States, where the majority of ID NOW instruments are in use today. The company is working with the Administration to deploy tests to areas where they can have the greatest impact.
 
The arrival of the Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test comes a week after the company launched its Abbott m2000 RealTime SARS-CoV-2 EUA test, which runs on the m2000 RealTime System located in hospital and reference labs around the world. Between the two platforms, Abbott expects to produce about 5 million tests per month.
 
As the world leader in point-of-care diagnostics, Abbott is adding its expertise and scale to help fight the COVID-19 global pandemic. First introduced in 2014, ID NOW is the leading molecular point-of-care platform for Influenza A & B, Strep A and RSV testing in the U.S.
 
ID NOW is a rapid, instrument-based, isothermal system for the qualitative detection of infectious diseases. Its unique isothermal nucleic acid amplification technology provides molecular results in just minutes, allowing clinicians to make evidence-based clinical decisions during a patient visit.
 
The ID NOW COVID-19 EUA has not been FDA cleared or approved. It has been authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization for use by authorized laboratories and patient care settings. The test has been authorized only for the detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2, not for any other viruses or pathogens, and is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of in-vitro diagnostic tests for detection and/or diagnosis of COVID-19.