July 31, 2020 – BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (Franklin Lakes, NJ) announced a $24 million investment from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support the scale up of U.S. manufacturing capabilities for BD Veritor Solution for Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19).
The company says that the additional capital equipment will bolster domestic production and increase total production capacity by 50%. These investments will enable global production of more than 12 million test kits per month by the end of February 2021.
BD previously announced on July 6 that it had received FDA emergency use authorization for the BD Veritor Plus SARS-CoV-2 antigen assay and plans to leverage its growing U.S.-installed base of more than 25,000 BD Veritor Plus instruments to enable the deployment of the SARS-CoV-2 assay across the country.
