On Oct. 14, 2021, The NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative announced that it has issued contract awards totaling $77.7 million to develop and manufacture 12 new rapid diagnostic tests for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The home and point-of-care testing platforms target the need for high-performance, low-cost home tests and point-of-care tests that can potentially detect multiple respiratory infections.The awards support the development, validation, scale-up and manufacturing with the goal of bringing needed tests to the market.