The U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) and Defense Dept. (DOD), awarded more than $562 million for COVID-19 test manufacturing.
As part of the American Rescue Plan to boost manufacturing of key products that increase domestic testing supply, the more than $562 million went to a dozen U.S. companies to support the production of supplies including pipette tips, protective packaging, swabs and reagents, according to a news release.
HHS and DOD’s investments follow President Joe Biden’s announcements of efforts to make COVID-19 testing more available to Americans, including a $3 billion investment into rapid testing to increase the supply of at-home tests by four times by December.
Here are the companies that received awards as part of the $562 million investment from the U.S. government:
- Nalge Nunc (Thermo Fisher Scientific subsidiary) – 192.5 million for domestic manufacturing of pipette tips used for COVID-19 sample collection and test processing.
- OraSure Technologies – $109 million for retrofitting facilities to increase manufacturing capacity for rapid antigen self-tests for at-home use.
- Cepheid – $63.8 million to increase production of plastic overmold, an essential material for rapid test kits.
- Labcon – $59.3 million to increase production of pipettes and tubes for COVID-19 testing.
- Mettler-Toledo Rainin – $35.8 million to increase production of pipette tips for COVID-19 testing.
- Eurofins – $30 million to expand production for components used to test clinical specimens for the presence of SARS-CoV-2.
- CSP Technologies – $19.27 million to scale up production of Activ-Film for packaging that ensures test integrity.
- Porex – $16.2 million to increase production of pipette tip filters that prevent specimen contamination.
- Steripack – $14.7 million to kickstart production of collection vials used for nasal swab tests.
- Princeton BioMeditech – $9.9 million to up production of COVID-19 testing and diagnostic kits.
- US Cotton – $6.5 million to increase production capacity of the polyester-tipped swabs used in COVID-19 home test kits and mass testing settings.
- Qiagen – $4 million to expand the manufacturing capacity of reagents and reagent kits used to detect SARS-CoV-2.
- Luminostics – $2 million to increase production capacity of Clip COVID-19 point-of-care test kits.