Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday it received federal emergency use authorization for its rapid COVID-19 test to be used at peoples’ homes, with results available in 15 minutes.
The medical device company is the latest to win emergency approval for an at-home coronavirus test from the Food and Drug Administration after Australian manufacturer Ellume received approval Tuesday to sell its test at drugstores.
The announcement comes at a time when the nation is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases and a vaccine made by Pfizer, initially administered to health care workers, enters the market.
Abbott plans to make 30 million BinaxNOW rapid antigen tests available in the first quarter of 2021, with an additional 90 million tests in the second quarter, the company said in a news release Wednesday. The test will cost $25.
Abbott is partnering with digital health service provider eMed to deliver and oversee the administration of the tests. Dr. Patrice Harris, CEO of eMed, said the company plans to begin the process Jan. 1, starting with a questionnaire.
—Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration will take place without broad public attendance, the congressional committee in charge of the planning announced Wednesday.
The changes, which are the latest adjustment to Capitol operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, mean there will not be a great dispute about crowd sizes.
Each member of the 117th Congress will receive a ticket for themselves and one guest, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies said. For a typical inauguration, the committee would provide about 200,000 tickets, distributed to congressional offices to give to constituents, often through lottery systems.
“The JCCIC, in consultation with diversified public health and medical experts and the Presidential Inaugural Committee, has determined that this global pandemic and the rise in COVID-19 cases warranted a difficult decision to limit attendance at the 59th Inaugural Ceremonies to a live audience that resembles a State of the Union,” JCCIC Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said in a statement.
—CQ-Roll Call
ATLANTA — A federal judge on Wednesday declined to force the state to immediately restore hundreds of thousands of people that were removed from the voting rolls last year.
Voting rights organizations, including the Black Voters Matter Fund, sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger earlier this month, challenging the removal of what they said were hundreds of thousands of eligible voters from Georgia’s rolls.
U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones said he would not grant the immediate restoration of voters to the rolls because they have had a year to re-register if they were removed incorrectly and, if the secretary of state’s office did reinstate them, it would cause confusion.
“Plaintiffs acknowledge that they do not know how many people on their list of canceled registrations may have re-registered before December 7, 2020,” Jones wrote in his ruling. “Thus, the risk of dual registrations and voter confusion is high.”
Instead, Jones asked the voting rights organizations to work with the secretary of state to figure out why Georgians were incorrectly removed from the rolls.
Jones said that while attorneys for Black Voters Matter Fund showed Georgia’s process for removing people from the voting rolls may have led to mistakes, the removals were not discriminatory.
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday reiterated the phrase common in Brussels that there is a "narrow" path to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain before the end of the year.
"I cannot tell you whether there will be a deal or not," the leader of the EU executive told the European Parliament. "But I can tell you there is a path to an agreement now. The path may be narrow but it is there."
There had been progress on guaranteeing standards for fair competition, such as rules on state aid or regarding minimum labor and environmental standards.
There are just two weeks until Britain leaves a post-Brexit transition period that keeps the country in the EU single market after formally leaving the bloc at the end of January.
—dpa, Berlin
