On Oct. 6, 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), working in collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), announced a third round of contract awards for scale-up and manufacturing of new COVID-19 testing technologies.

These awards are part of the RADx Tech program, focused on rapidly advancing early testing technologies. RADx Tech and the RADx Advanced Technology Platforms (RADx-ATP) —the latter for late-stage scale-up projects— are now supporting a combined portfolio of 22 companies for a total of $476.4 million in manufacturing expansion contracts. These six additional technologies are expected to add as many as 500,000 tests per day to the U.S. capacity by the end of 2020 and 1 million tests per day by early 2021. Combined with previous contracts announced in July and September, RADx Tech and RADx-ATP contracts are expected to increase test capacity by 2.7 million tests per day by the end of 2020.

The latest group of testing technologies have been optimized and assessed within the NIH RADx Tech development pipeline and have met the rigorous criteria for advancement. Factors such as speed, accuracy, cost and accessibility are key considerations for RADx support. The RADx initiative provides financial support and expertise to help companies reach milestones for U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorization, scale-up and commercialization.