March 18, 2021 – BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (Franklin Lakes, NJ) issued the following statement regarding the U.S. government’s plan to invest $10 billion in COVID-19 testing in American schools:
Dave Hickey, president of Life Sciences for BD said, “Committing $10 billion for COVID-19 testing in America’s schools is a critical investment in getting all schools open and back to in-person learning.
“As a manufacturer of both PCR and antigen tests, BD understands the strengths of both approaches to testing. For testing programs administered by health care providers in schools, antigen tests are ideal because they are easy to use, low cost, don’t require sophisticated lab equipment or personnel, can be performed in a CLIA waiver point-of-care setting and most importantly, can provide a test result in 15 minutes when students are suspected of COVID-19, which allows for immediate isolation and other protective measures to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
“In addition, some antigen tests, like the one used on the BD Veritor Plus System provide additional benefits, including a definitive positive or negative digital readout and enabling data transfer to the cloud for ease of reporting test results to public health officials. The ease of use and immediate results provided by antigen tests would allow our educators to focus on teaching, not testing.”