White House highlights new COVID-19 antigen test amidst focus on point-of-care technologies

The spotlight on the first FDA-authorized COVID-19 antigen test at Monday’s White House briefing suggests these rapid immunoassays are about to become a larger part of the conversation on COVID-19 testing. But the test’s technical specs indicate more established diagnostics will still be required to rule out infection.

The White House’s presentation also called out rapid point-of-care nucleic acid tests from Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) and Cepheid Inc., and framed these technologies -- which don’t require sending samples to specialized labs -- as key to making testing accessible to underserved populations (see “Crisis Spurs Rapid Diagnostics”)...