Global health R&D at work in Illinois
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago-headquartered medical device company Abbott developed the widely used BinaxNOW line of rapid COVID-19 tests, which was first authorized for prescription use and then later for at-home self-testing. At the height of the pandemic, the company, which has several manufacturing facilities across the United States, provided more than 180 million tests for distribution by the US federal government to healthcare settings and homes and through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator global partnership, provided millions of its tests at low cost to low- and middle-income countries to expand diagnostic testing.