The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Makers of rapid, at-home tests can’t meet demand
Biden says government will buy millions, but availability in question.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is betting on millions more rapid, at-home-tests to help curb the latest deadly wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is overloading hospitals and threatening to shutter classrooms around the country.
But the tests already have disappeared from pharmacy shelves in many parts of the U.S., and manufacturers warn it will take them weeks to ramp up production, after scaling it back amid plummeting demand over thesummer.
The latest shortage is another painful reminder that the U.S. has yet to successfully manage its COVID-19 testing arsenal, let alone deploy it in the type of systematic way needed to quickly crush outbreaks in schools, workplaces and communities.
Experts say encouraging signs last spring led to false confidence about the shrinking role for tests. Officials recently reversed that advice as cases and deaths driven by the delta variant surged anew.
“For all of us, there was a combination of optimism and hubris in the June time frame that led us to believe this was over,” said Mara Aspinall, a health industry researcher at Arizona State University who has become a leading authority on COVID-19 testing supplies.
Parts of the U.S. testing system are faring better than during previous surges. The large commercial labs that process the majority of tests performed at hospitals and testing sites still report plenty of capacity. Labcorp, one of the biggest laboratory chains, said last weekit was delivering results for 150,000 tests daily, with the ability to double that number.
Rapid tests have a clear advantage in that they can be done anywhere and have a 20-minute turnaround time, but most school testing programs still rely on tests processed in labs, which return results in a day or two.
In a speech this monthannouncing sweeping new vaccine mandates, Biden highlighted rapid tests, saying the government would purchase 280 million of them, as he also called on all schools to set up regular testing programs. Biden said the federal government will use the Defense Production Act to ensure manufacturers have the raw materials they need to make tests.
HHS has announced few details of the $2 billion plan to purchase rapid tests. For now, retail chains such as CVS and Walgreens have placed limits on how many at-home tests customers can buy.
Abbott Laboratories, t he nation’s largest rapid test maker, said it is producing “tens of millions” of its Binaxnow tests per month and working to increase capacity in coming weeks.