The Biden administration announced Wednesday a massive, $1 billion investment to expand access to at-home COVID-19 tests, an allocation that could quadruple the amount of rapid tests available to Americans by next summer, officials said Wednesday.

What You Need To Know

  • The Biden administration announced Wednesday a massive, $1 billion investment to expand access to at-home COVID-19 tests

  • The U.S. has recently produced an average of around 30 million rapid tests per month; following Wednesday’s announcement, there could be around 200 million tests available by December

  • The news comes days after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized an at-home rapid test from U.S.-based ACON Laboratories

  • The current plan, which is subject to change pending contractual obligations, is to offer ACON's Flowflex tests at-cost for less than $10 

The administration formally announced the billion-dollar investment during a COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, where White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said the funds aim to “further mobilize testing manufacturers.”

“This means companies will be able to expand production of tests even further based on the United States government's commitment to procure an additional 180 million rapid tests over the course of the next year, with tens of millions more tests coming to market over the course of the next 30 days,” Zients added. 

The U.S. has recently produced an average of around 30 million rapid tests per month; following Wednesday’s announcement, there could be around 200 million tests available by December.

The news comes days after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized an at-home rapid test from U.S.-based ACON Laboratories.

The over-the-counter antigen test, known as Flowflex, “should significantly increase the availability of rapid, at-home tests and is expected to double rapid at-home testing capacity in the U.S. over the next several weeks,” Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, wrote in a statement.

“By years end, the manufacturer plans to produce more than 100 million tests per month, and this number will rise to 200 million per month by February 2022,” Dr. Shuren wrote, adding: “We believe at-home diagnostic tests play a critical role in the fight against COVID-19.”

Zients on Wednesday said the current plan, which is subject to change pending contractual obligations, is to offer the Flowflex tests at-cost for less than $10. 

The U.S. has also received commitments from two additional test-manufacturing companies — Orasure and Quidel — to “further expand manufacturing and speed up their production of rapid tests,” which Zients said would add tens of millions of tests per month. 

Zients would not detail specifics of the U.S. contracts with any testing company, but did say the administration expects that as “manufacturing ramps up, pricing should come down as economies of scale are achieved and competition kicks in.” 

Last month, the White House authorized a $2 billion investment for rapid tests at community health centers and schools, and announced certain retailers would sell at-cost tests over the course of the next several months.

Still, demand has grown for at-home COVID-19 tests as offices and schools have opened nationwide, but supply has been limited in some places.

The news also comes one day after Australian company Ellume announced that it is recalling nearly 200,000 rapid at-home COVID tests due to a high rate of false positives.