NEW YORK – Cue Health announced Tuesday it has received a $481 million award from the US Department of Defense to expand its production capacity for COVID-19 tests.
The money will be used to help Cue onshore its supply chain and increase production capacity to provide 6 million of its point-of-care COVID-19 tests by March 2021. The test returns results within 20 minutes and runs on the Cue Health Monitoring System with a reusable cartridge reader and single-use test kits. The cartridge reader sends results directly to the Cue Health App, downloaded to a smartphone or other device, the company said.
The effort to expand capacity is led by the DOD's Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense in coordination with DoD's Joint Acquisition Task Force. The award is funded through the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health to support domestic production of critical medical resources. Test cartridges will be manufactured at Cue's facilities in San Diego.
The Cue Health Monitoring System and Cue COVID-19 test received Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in June for use at the point-of-care as directed by healthcare providers. The firm also closed a $100 million Series C financing round in June to complete the development, validation, and manufacturing scale-up of the monitoring system and test cartridges.