![]() “I would just caution in terms of using the word ‘destroy’ because it kind of gives a sense here that we’ve got all these tests that were in packages and we threw them away,” Ford said.Īsked why the materials needed to be thrown away, Ford cited a limited shelf life. Kits for sale also include swabs, liquid buffer and instructions. In an interview, Abbott CEO Robert Ford argued that the discarded materials - finished test cards - should not be viewed as tests. The factory for Abbott Laboratories, a major supplier of rapid tests for COVID-19, in Westbrook, Maine, Aug. Abbott is scrambling to hire back hundreds of workers. CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens locations have been selling out of the at-home version, and Amazon shows shipping delays of up to three weeks. Yet Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future. But now, amid a new surge in infections, steps the company took to eliminate stock and wind down manufacturing are proving untimely - hobbling efforts to expand screening as the highly contagious delta strain rages across the country.ĭemand for the 15-minute antigen test, BinaxNOW, is soaring again as people return to schools and offices. plummeted this past spring, so did Abbott’s COVID-testing sales. “This is all about money.”Īs virus cases in the U.S. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing. ![]() The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a workforce of 2,000. ![]() Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for COVID-19 were given a task that shocked them: Take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags.
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