Covid-19: United States authorizes Australian self-tests
The United States has urgently authorized the use of self-tests against Covid-19, manufactured by the Australian company Ellume.
Here a person is using one.
© Elluma, via Reuters
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
While the laboratories of the United States are unable to detect coronavirus patients and the country has just passed 300,000 deaths, the American Food and Drug Agency (FDA) authorized this Tuesday, December 15 the setting urgently needed in the US self-test market.
Without a prescription, they are made by the Australian company Ellume.
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With our correspondent in Sydney,
Grégory Plesse
A coronavirus screening in less than 20 minutes and that can be done on your own: this is the promise of the Australian company Ellume.
It makes Covid-19 tests, the first that can be sold without a prescription
in the United States
, at around $ 30 a unit in drugstores.
They are 96% reliable, according to tests by the American authorities, who wish to speed up the screening of the population, while waiting for it to be vaccinated.
20 million of these tests will be delivered by the end of March in the United States, at the rate of 100,000 per day by the end of this month of December, announced Ellume.
This Brisbane-based company has been developing diagnostic tools for zoonoses, these animal diseases transmissible to humans, for ten years.
For its Covid-19 test, it pledged to double its production capacity to meet American demand.
Washington hopes for its part to unclog the laboratories
, overwhelmed by the Covid-19 tests to be analyzed.
These Australian tests are also of interest to universities, to facilitate the return of foreign students, but also sports federations, which would like to see the public return to the stadiums.
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