Abbot and SD Biosensor will make 120 million rapid COVID-19 antigen tests available for low-to-medium income countries at the cost of $5 per unit for the next six months as part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator programme.

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and launched by WHO, European Commission and France, the Accelerator programme has already trained up laboratories in partnership with Africa CDC and provided 20 million tests.

Along with the rapid antigen tests, antibody tests are also being evaluated to understand population immunity for vaccine development.

SD Biosensor is supplying its STANDARD™ Q COVID-19 rapid test (CE-marked) and Abbott, with its PanBio™ COVID-19 (CE-marked) rapid antigen test for the programme. Both tests provide results within 15-20 minutes. Abbott is also supplying Sympheos™ digital solution, that syncs up with the network of tests been deployed, giving real-time data on disease states and trends.