NEW YORK – Qiagen said after the close of the market on Thursday that it has received a $3.4 million add-on contract from the US Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services to increase the production capacity for COVID-19 test consumables.
Specifically, the contract will support increased production capacity for COVID-19 tests to be used on the company's NeuMoDx 96 and 288 integrated PCR testing systems at Qiagen's Ann Arbor, Michigan, site. By the end of March 2022, Qiagen plans to scale up production to more than 16 million tests per year from the current level of about 10 million.
The recently awarded contract follows an approximately $600,000 contract awarded by DOD and HHS to Qiagen in August to expand production capacity for reagents at Qiagen's OEM site in Beverly, Massachusetts.
"These US government contracts and capacity expansions are a testament to the crucial role of PCR testing in the fight against COVID-19 and their increasing value to improving outcomes to patients," Jean-Pascal Viola, senior vice president and head of the molecular diagnostics business area at Qiagen, said in a statement.