Quidel Supports New NIH, CDC Public Health Initiative for At-home COVID-19 Testing

Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ: QDEL) (“Quidel”), a leading provider of rapid diagnostic testing solutions, cellular-based virology assays and molecular diagnostic systems, announced today that it is partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on an innovative community health initiative called “Say Yes! COVID Test” in Pitt County, North Carolina, and coming soon to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee. Quidel is providing two million QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Tests to be distributed to approximately 160,000 residents free of charge across the two communities. The study is designed to determine if access to at-home rapid antigen tests three times a week for one month can significantly reduce virus spread in vulnerable communities.

Quidel’s QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Test is a visually read assay for the qualitative detection of the nucleocapsid protein antigen from SARS-CoV-2 and requires no instrument to perform the test. The easy-to-use QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Test will allow the program’s participants to easily perform the test themselves and get results in 10 minutes. The QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Test shows excellent performance, with positive results agreeing with PCR 83.5% of the time, and negative results agreeing 99.2% of the time, delivering peace of mind to people running the test and facilitating reporting of results to the public health initiative’s sponsors via a customized app developed for the “Say Yes! COVID Test” initiative.

Quidel’s QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Test is being supplied through the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx^SM) initiative. Selection of the two communities was based on local infection rates, public availability of accurate COVID-19 tracking data, existing community relationships through the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) and local infrastructure to support the project.

“This testing initiative is the first of this scale to attempt to make free, rapid, self-administered tests available community-wide in order to determine their effectiveness in our nation’s comprehensive response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “We hope to gain foundational data that can guide how communities can use self-administered tests to mitigate viral transmission during this and future pandemics.”