NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Rockefeller Foundation announced an initiative on March 26, to provide guidance on testing for K-12 public schools to enable safe in-person learning. The K-12 National Testing Action Program: Connecting Schools with the Nation’s Leading Testing Companies to Safely Reopen (NTAP) connects schools with laboratories and testing partners, including Aegis Sciences Corporation.
Routine testing of students, teachers and staff empowers school administrators with the knowledge they need to safely operate in-person learning. A successful testing program works to quickly identify positive cases to keep school infection rates low. Laboratory partners must return results to schools and test takers within 24 hours. With its large scale national testing capabilities and newly launched pooled testing program which supports more frequent, easy to administer testing at a lower cost while not materially sacrificing accuracy, Aegis is well placed to support this important new initiative.
Since launching COVID-19 testing in April 2020, Aegis has quickly increased testing capacity to meet the needs of communities and schools across the United States. Last fall, Aegis was selected to participate in the National Institutes of Health Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative and received an NIH grant to expand COVID-19 testing capacity to 60,000 tests per day by September 2020. Since then, reflecting its success in rapidly expanding testing while maintaining its industry leading turnaround time, Aegis’s has been awarded additional NIH grants. Aegis is currently able to perform over 110,000 tests per day within a targeted 24-hour or less turnaround time.
Drawing from the diverse and broad reach of its national testing program, which includes a collaboration with Walgreens to perform COVID-19 testing for over 3,000 of its pharmacy locations, Aegis has recently entered into a contract with the CDC to perform next-generation sequencing analysis of de-identified positive samples from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Aegis’s unique combination of national scale, excellent service and first rate lab capabilities not only allows for efficient diagnosis of individuals that have been infected by SARS-CoV-2, but also assists in identifying regional and national transmission of variants of concern.
“Aegis has a proven track record of delivering accurate COVID-19 results with an industry leading turnaround time across the United States. We are honored to be selected as a laboratory testing partner for this latest initiative to safely reopen schools,” said Dr. Frank Basile, CEO of Aegis Sciences Corporation.
For more information on setting up a pooled RT-PCR lab-based testing program for your school district, please email Regina Sweeney at regina.sweeney@aegislabs.com
About Aegis Sciences Corporation
Founded in 1990, Aegis Sciences Corporation is a laboratory sciences company based in Nashville, Tenn., that provides science-driven testing and consulting services for clients such as healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, professional and amateur sports organizations, leading college and university athletic programs, Fortune 500 corporations, and government agencies throughout the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.aegislabs.com/.
Aegis’s testing project is supported by the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADxSM) initiative and has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. 75N92020C00022.
Stephanie Protz
stephanie.protz@aegislabs.com
615.577.4535