AdvaMed Statement on White House Request for Information on COVID-19 Test Manufacturing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, AdvaMed President and CEO Scott Whitaker applauded the White House’s Request for Information on policies to sustain diagnostic test manufacturing for COVID-19. This comes as AdvaMedDx, a division of AdvaMed that represents more than 75 diagnostic companies, and other partners have encouraged the Biden Administration to do more to maintain COVID-19 test manufacturing capacity and implement public-private agreements to shore up supply.
“This is a much-needed step in the right direction toward sustaining our industry’s Covid testing manufacturing capacity in the U.S. We have long advocated for policies such as Warm-Base Manufacturing arrangements and leveraging of the Strategic National Stockpile through Vendor Managed Inventory as essential to ensuring a robust, ongoing response to the pandemic, and to providing a framework for future health emergencies. We are encouraged by this announcement, and we look forward to responding to the RFI. We also encourage the quick establishment of concrete commitments between the federal government and manufacturers so that market volatility will no longer determine test availability.”
The diagnostics industry has shipped approximately 800 million molecular (including PCR) tests to laboratories across the country since March 2020, as well as more than a billion at-home tests nationwide, and has doubled automated molecular lab instrumentation with over 24,000 instruments now in U.S. laboratories.
# # #
AdvaMed member companies produce the medical devices, diagnostic products and digital health technologies that are transforming health care through earlier disease detection, less invasive procedures and more effective treatments. AdvaMed members range from the largest to the smallest medical technology innovators and companies. For more information, visit www.advamed.org.