Written by Conor Hale
To help meet the relentless demand for COVID-19 diagnostics, Thermo Fisher Scientific has stood up a new, $40 million manufacturing facility in six weeks.
The 120,000-square-foot plant at its Lenexa, Kansas site will be dedicated to producing viral transport media, the combination of buffering solution and plastic tubes that keep swab samples viable until they can be tested in the lab for the novel coronavirus.
Thermo Fisher was previously tapped by the U.S. government to provide large amounts of aseptic transport media, through a $381 million contract signed in May. That month, the company would ramp up production in Lenexa from 50,000 to over 1 million media-filled tubes per week.
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