Washington (AFP)

The United States announced Monday that it had signed a contract of nearly 232 million dollars with the company Ellume for the manufacture of rapid tests for Covid-19 that can be carried out at home and without a prescription.

The Department of Defense, in coordination with the Department of Health, "granted $ 231.8 million to Ellume USA LLC for the development of a production capacity for the home test of Covid-19 for the United States" , the Pentagon said in a statement.

This contract should allow Ellume, an Australian company, to increase its production capacity in the United States to 640,000 tests per day by December, he added, specifying that 8.5 million tests were guaranteed for the US government.

Ellume "has increased its production and will deliver 100,000 kits per month to the United States between February and July, which is good but it is not enough", explained in a briefing Andy Slavitt, adviser to the White House for the fight against the coronavirus.

The increase in production will also ultimately lower the price of the test, which costs around $ 30, he added.

Ellume's antigen test had been approved by the United States Medicines Agency (FDA) in mid-December.

Sold without a prescription in pharmacies, it uses a nasal swab which must then be inserted into a small box, connected to the user's smartphone by Bluetooth.

The results are available in about fifteen minutes on a previously downloaded application.

It detects the presence of the virus with 95% efficiency.

While antigen tests are less sensitive than PCR tests, many public health experts have been campaigning for their massive use for months.

Inexpensive, they could indeed allow people to test themselves several times a week as needed, and to have a result almost immediately, against one or more days for PCR tests.

“They can be used if you have symptoms of Covid-19 and also to test asymptomatic people who can go safely to work or school,” said Andy Slavitt.

To develop the test, Ellume received $ 30 million in funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Another rapid test, from Lucira Health, was approved by the FDA in mid-November, but it is only available on prescription.

© 2021 AFP