BOSTON, May 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks
("Ginkgo") today announced a collaboration with Quest Diagnostics
(NYSE:DGX) to provide COVID-19 Kindergarten through Senior (K-12)
school testing services to support classroom learning nationwide.
The services are based on recommendations provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation in its K-12 National Testing Action Program:
Connecting Schools with the Nation's Leading Testing Companies to
Safely Reopen, which provides a testing roadmap for schools and
cites both Quest and Ginkgo for their COVID-19 testing
expertise.
Each organization brings unique strengths to the collaboration.
The nation's leader in diagnostic information services, Quest
Diagnostics, has capacity to perform 300,000 COVID-19 PCR/NAAT*
tests a day through its network of approximately two dozen COVID-19
test performing laboratories for people in every U.S. state, the
District of Columbia as well as
Puerto Rico and other U.S.
territories. Test results are typically provided within a day.**
Ginkgo has developed its Concentric by Ginkgo platform to provide
easy start-up and operation for any school seeking easy-to-use
digital participant sign-up, secure data management, timely
supplies shipments, integration of follow-up testing regimes, and
fully staffed support services. Concentric currently serves roughly
1,000 schools across the United
States, including statewide partnerships in Massachusetts and Maine, as well as city- and district-wide
partnerships in Baltimore,
Newark, and Milwaukee. Ginkgo's integration of Quest labs
into its nationwide lab network will dramatically expand its
capacity, allowing Concentric by Ginkgo the opportunity to serve
every single student and teacher in America through pooled testing
every week.
"Testing is an absolutely critical tool for responding to this
pandemic, and we believe pooled testing is the modality that makes
the most sense for students and teachers working to return to
in-person learning," said Jason
Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. "On a national
level, our collaboration with Quest ensures that communities across
America will have the capacity and the know-how to test every
student, every week."
"Quest has been at the forefront of COVID-19 testing from the
beginning of the pandemic, providing nearly 40 million COVID-19
molecular diagnostic tests since March
2020. Now, we are applying our deep experience in COVID-19
testing to help our nation's kids and teachers get back to school
more safely," said James E. Davis,
Executive Vice President, General Diagnostics, for Quest
Diagnostics. "With Ginkgo's highly intuitive interface and data
management system we can provide a school testing solution that is
high quality, convenient and cost efficient, anywhere in the
U.S."
Under the program, school administrators can implement a testing
program that tests students, teachers and staff using pooled
specimens. Pooled testing, which combines swabs from all consenting
individuals in a classroom and runs them as a single test, can
significantly increase testing capacity and lower the cost of
testing programs. Quest provides the testing using high quality,
validated molecular diagnostic PCR/NAAT laboratory tests.*
For more information, visit ConcentricByGinkgo.com or
QuestBacktoClass.com.
*Polymerase chain reaction is a type of Nucleic Acid
Amplification Test.
**Capacity depends on access to sufficient supplies and
equipment as well as positivity rates. While our average turnaround
time for COVID-19 molecular diagnostic testing continues to be
approximately 1-2 days, we complete and report the large majority
of tests within 1 day. Turnaround time refers to the expected
number of days required to collect, transport, perform testing on
and report results for a specimen. Turnaround time can fluctuate
with demand, supplies and other factors, and vary by region. For
more information, please refer to Quest's COVID-19 media statement
issued on April 27, 2021:
newsroom.questdiagnostics.com/COVIDTestingUpdates
About Ginkgo Bioworks
Concentric by Ginkgo is Ginkgo
Bioworks' public health and biosecurity effort. Headquartered in
Boston, Ginkgo uses the most
advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow better products.
The company's cell programming platform is enabling the growth of
biotechnology across diverse markets, from food to fragrance to
pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo is also actively supporting a number of
COVID-19 response efforts, including community testing,
epidemiological tracing, vaccine development and therapeutics
discovery. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.
Contact: press@ginkgobioworks.com;
ginkgobioworks@missionnorth.com
About Quest Diagnostics
Quest Diagnostics empowers
people to take action to improve health outcomes. Derived from the
world's largest database of clinical lab results, our diagnostic
insights reveal new avenues to identify and treat disease, inspire
healthy behaviors and improve health care management. Quest
annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the
physicians and hospitals in the United
States, and our 50,000 employees understand that, in the
right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can
inspire actions that transform lives. www.QuestDiagnostics.com.
For more information about the latest developments with our
COVID-19 testing, visit:
newsroom.questdiagnostics.com/COVIDTestingUpdates
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SOURCE Ginkgo Bioworks