Abbott orders employees to get rid of COVID-19 testing equipment quickly

Employees of Abbott Laboratories, which perform rapid COVID-19 tests, were ordered in June and July to begin destroying BinaxNOW test materials amid declining sales, The New York Times reported.

The BinaxNOW antigen test, which can provide COVID-19 results in 15 minutes, was popular earlier in the pandemic as a way for people to quickly find out if they had the coronavirus, and Abbott has already partnered with the White House under the old President TrumpDonald TrumpOvernight Defense: Afghan flights restart as Biden vows to complete evacuation Trump says he “single-handedly” chose Alabama for Space Command, contradicting Pentagon overnight healthcare: the battle for masks in Florida escalate as two school districts given 48 hours to comply MORE.

Antigen tests are less reliable than PCR tests, which tend to give results within days.

The Times reported that sales of the rapid test plummeted in the spring as cases began to decline as part of a nationwide vaccine rollout.

An announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in May that vaccinated people did not need to continue to be tested even if they had been exposed to COVID-19 added to the problem, with fewer people needing testing .

“The numbers are down,” site manager Andy Wilkinson reportedly told employees who were ultimately made redundant of requests for testing. “It’s all about the money.”

As a result, hundreds of thousands of test cards used for rapid testing have been phased out, according to a few employees who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Times.

However, Abbott now has a new problem: being able to meet renewed demand for rapid testing as the delta variant spreads through vulnerable and unvaccinated communities, creating a new wave of COVID-19 cases.

The Times reported that Abbott has told thousands of companies that she would not be able to immediately provide them with rapid tests as she struggles to rehire workers she had previously made redundant.

Aly Morici, director of public affairs at Abbott, told The Times in an emailed statement that it was “difficult to increase quickly, but we are doing it again” and predicted there would be “constraints. supply “over the next few weeks.

However, questions remain as to why the test cards were phased out.

Abbott CEO and Chairman Robert Ford told The Times in an interview that test cards were being phased out due to their lifespan, although the outlet reported that photos they had of test cards throws in June and July showed they were not set to expire for at least seven months.

In a statement after the Times article was published, Abbott issued a statement claiming that the company had “not destroyed any finished BinaxNOW product, or any usable test component that the market may have needed.”

The company argued that it has also chosen to store some of its materials for future use “in case we need a scale up, which is exactly what is happening now.”