NEW YORK ─ Hologic said on Friday that it has been awarded a $119 million contract from the US government to expand its production capacity for COVID-19 molecular tests.
The contract was awarded by the Department of Defense Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, the Department of the Air Force's Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force, and the US Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), with BARDA providing the funding.
Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Hologic said the contract will support capital and labor investments to enable it to provide 13 million COVID-19 tests per month for the US market by January 2022.
The firm's Panther Fusion SARS-CoV-2 Assay and Aptima SARS-CoV-2 Assay received Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in March 2020 and May 2020, respectively.
The tests run on Hologic's fully automated Panther Fusion and Panther systems, which provide initial results in approximately three hours and process more than 1,000 tests in 24 hours, Hologic said. More than 2,000 of the systems have been installed in clinical diagnostic laboratories around the world, the firm added.
Hologic noted that BARDA is also separately supporting the development of its COVID-19 assays. In May, BARDA announced it awarded the company $13 million for the development of the Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay, and in March it awarded Hologic $699,000 to develop the Fusion SARS-CoV-2 test.