Gov. Gavin Newsom says the state is partnering with a well-known testing company to vastly increase California's COVID-19 testing capacity and drive down costs.
The state is currently averaging 100,000 tests a day with a turnaround time of five to seven days. Newsom says the new partnership with Perkins-Elmer Genomics will allow for an additional 150,000 tests per day at costs between $30-$50 dollars per day and turnaround times of 24 to 48 hours.
"This is exactly what the federal government should be doing and had the federal government done this some time ago you wouldn't see average costs of tests at $150-$200 dollars, costing the taxpayers quite literally tens of billions of dollars, costing employers billions and billions of dollars, costing the health plans billions of dollars as well," Newsom said.
The contract specifies for the cost per test to go down as testing volume goes up. The governor stressed that the new testing capacity adds to, rather than replaces, existing testing, and ties the timing to the expected crunch as fall and winter flu season hits alongside the Coronavirus.
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