San Diego-based medical diagnostic company Cue Health Inc. announced Tuesday that it has received a $481 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to expand its COVID-19 testing capabilities.
Manufacturing of the test cartridges will be done exclusively at Cue’s facilities in Sorrento Valley.
The award is slated to boost U.S.-based production capacity and deploy six million molecular, point-of-care Cue tests by March 2021.
“We are excited to be part of this historic, first-of-its-kind initiative led by the U.S. government to deploy point-of-care molecular testing to protect the health of Americans,” said Ayub Khattak, founder and CEO of Cue. “Our vision in designing the Cue Health Monitoring System was to enable individuals to have more control over their health and lives by providing access to actionable, accurate health data in real time.”
Khattak said the deployment of millions of Cue’s point-of-care COVID-19 tests will significantly reduce the time to obtain molecular test results for individual patients to about 20 minutes.
In June 2020, the Cue Health Monitoring System and Cue COVID-19 Test received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The authorization allows the test to be used by anywhere at the point-of-care, in conjunction with authorized laboratories, as directed by health care providers.
The effort is funded through the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health to enable and support domestic production of critical medical resources.
— City News Service
