Abbott has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the fastest available molecular point-of-care test for the detection of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), delivering positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.

The test will run on the company's ID NOW^™ platform, providing rapid results in a wide range of healthcare settings such as physicians' offices, urgent care clinics and hospital emergency departments.

Abbott will be making ID NOW COVID-19 tests available to healthcare providers in urgent care settings in the U.S., where the majority of ID NOW instruments are in use today. The company is working with the Administration to deploy tests to areas where they can have the greatest impact. 

The arrival of the Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test comes a week after the company launched its Abbott m2000^™ RealTime SARS-CoV-2 EUA test, which runs on the m2000^™ RealTime System located in hospital and reference labs around the world. Between the two platforms, Abbott expects to produce about 5 million tests per month.