Abbott Laboratories’ Covid-19 tests still not running near capacity

Minneapolis — An Abbott Laboratories machine that can process large numbers of coronavirus tests have run only a tiny fraction of the million it could have, according to a top US health official, as the machines have yet to get up to their full capacity.

Abbott’s machines, a model called the m2000, should have been capable of running about a million Covid-19 tests in the past three weeks, Deborah Birx, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, said at a briefing in Washington on Wednesday night. But they have run less than 10% of that amount.

“It’s a very high throughput machine; we have a million tests out there,” Birx said. “They’re not running. We’ve only run 88,000 tests in three weeks with those machines, with a million test kits.”

US attempts to contain the coronavirus have been stymied by repeated problems and failures with diagnostic tests, which are necessary to identify patients and isolate them, or to help protect health workers treating them. Health workers and officials around the US have cited long delays in getting results and limited availability of tests from multiple different sources.

There are 175 of Abbott’s m2000 machines at academic medical centres and hospital laboratories across the country, where they are typically used to test for conditions such as HIV and hepatitis. Getting them in the right location, with the appropriate staff and supplies to run Covid-19 tests around the clock, is still a work in progress in some areas.

“In our interactions with customers, we understand that the majority are running Covid-19 tests,” said Kimberly Modory, an Abbott spokesperson, in a statement.

“Some of these labs are working to expand their capacity by increasing staff and supplies to run more shifts. In some instances, states and cities are working to establish ways to send the samples to the labs that have capacity.”

Abbott has also developed a test that can be administered by a doctor or nurse and run through a small machine, returning results in a few minutes.

Birx said on Wednesday night that she is planning to speak to lab directors to learn more about the issues running tests on the m2000. She said that had the tests been running at capacity, it would have been enough to run checks on health workers across the country.

“They could have screened, in these past three weeks, 100% of the healthcare workers across the country that needed these tests to be done.” 

Bloomberg