The Biden administration plans to announce on Wednesday a $137 million contract for Millipore Sigma, a unit of Germany's Merck KGaA , to boost production capacity of a highly constrained component of rapid coronavirus tests, a senior administration official told Reuters.
U.S. President Joe Biden talks virtually with service members, from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building's South Court Auditorium at the White House, during an event with first lady Jill Biden, in Washington, U.S., December 25, 2021.
The money will allow the company over three years to build a new facility to produce nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that displays test results, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That, in turn, will allow for 85 million more tests to be produced per month, the official said.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"It's probably the most constrained piece of technology in expanding capacity, in making more of these over-the-counter or point-of-care tests," the official said.
The contract, which will be announced by the Department of Defense for the Department of Health and Human Services, is part of a bid by the Biden administration to ramp up production of scarce rapid COVID-19 tests, which has taken on more urgency as nations grapple with the highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
But U.S. testing is behind the curve because of a lack of skilled workers, a shortage of at-home tests and under-investment in recent months, and health experts in the U.S. said Biden's latest plan was "too little, too late."
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