Google’s (NSDQ:GOOGL) Verily announced that it established a CLIA-certified lab to create additional lab capacity to support COVID-19 testing.
The lab, at Verily’s San Francisco headquarters, is designed to support programs in the COVID-19 testing space as demand continues to increase while the pandemic goes on, including the company’s own return-to-work efforts for its own employees, according to a news release.
Verily said in the release that it established partnerships with several leading test providers for its testing programs and plans to continue scaling with existing lab partners, along with its own lab, to meet needs for testing across the U.S. The company verified its lab with the TaqPath test kit from Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) and submitted an FDA emergency use authorization application for the adaptation of TaqPath for use in testing pooled patient specimens.
Pooling would enable the clinical lab to increase testing capacity more, while, in addition to the TaqPath kit, Verily verified the Roche Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody test and plans to implement more tests in its lab as well.