Medical technology company BD announced this week that it has received a $24 million investment from the U.S. Department of Defense to help it scale up manufacturing capabilities for its BD Veritor COVID-19 diagnostic test.
The investment by the DOD, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will help the Franklin Lakes-based company — also known as Becton, Dickinson & Co. — bolster production capacity by 50%, enabling global production of more than 12 million test kits per month by February 2021.
“Making COVID-19 diagnostic tests widely available is critical to expanding rapid detection of COVID-19 infections, and mitigating the impact of the disease by identifying affected patients, quickly quarantining infectious individuals and tracing their contacts,” Dave Hickey, BD’s president of integrated diagnostic solutions, said in a prepared statement. “This investment will bolster our U.S. manufacturing capabilities, helping us quickly scale our production of point-of-care COVID-19 tests to ensure we have a robust supply for our U.S. consumers.”
The BD Veritor test received FDA emergency use authorization on July 6.
