The United States Department of Defense has awarded a contract...

The United States Department of Defense has awarded a contract worth $US230 million ($302million) to Brisbane-based biotech firm Ellume to ramp up production of its COVID-19 home test kits.The money will allow increased production of the kits, boosting the number of potential home tests undertaken in the US by 640,000 tests per day by the end of the year, with 8.5 million kits to be distributed directly by the US Government.Ellume's COVID-19 test is the first at-home test to get US FDA emergency approval. It is designed to detect fragments of the virus from a nasal swab sample from a person as young as two years old.White House senior advisor Andy Slavitt said the funding would help Ellume dramatically ramp up its production of the test kits, with 100,000 currently in production each month."That's good but it's obviously not where we'll need to be," he told a White House briefing."They'll be able to scale their production to manufacture more than 19 million test kits per month by the end of this year, 8.5 million of which are guaranteed to the US Government."Mr Slavitt argued it was vital to have tools such as the at-home testing kits, if the US was to have any chance of bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control."The ability to quickly test, to contact trace and quarantine is a linchpin of our national strategy and will be a vital part of containing the virus and stopping community spread." Mr Slavitt said.The test is not in use in Australia

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