The IdNow Fiasco in Canada The Liberals just can’t get it right when it comes to rapid point of care testing. Early in the pandemic they rushed the Spartan Cube to market only to find out it performed very poorly. That made them go “testing gun shy”. Up until a few weeks ago HC’s website said they wouldn’t even consider antigen testing in accordance with the WHO’s recommendations. Roll things ahead a week and Doug Ford is begging for a rapid test, countries all over the world have either been using the tests or are rolling them out. Political pressure is mounting for something to be done and the WHO changes their position, announcing they will provide 120 million antigen tests to low and middle class countries. The tests are made by Abbott and SdBiosensor. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-09-2020-global-partnership-to-make-available-120-million-affordable-quality-covid-19-rapid-tests-for-low--and-middle-income-countries
The government is caught off guard. Case counts are rising, testing resources are strained and there are no approvals from HC. What to do? In their haste to avoid a political disaster and silence Doug Ford’s pleas for help the Liberal higher up’s direct their procurement people to “find us some tests”. And they do just that. The folks at procurement don’t really know the differences among tests, they’re just looking for a good deal. So they go to the covid testing surplus store, yes the one right beside the used submarine surplus store, and they pick up 7.9 million IdNow tests made by Abbott Labs. On further inspection it’s probably not the best decision they could have made. Firstly It required HC to give it approval overnight (right after saying it took 50 days for HC to process an application). In fact the test performed so poorly that Abbott didn’t even seek approval in Canada until the deal was made. Secondly, the test had been cannibalized by its own manufacturer. By introducing the BinaxNow rapid point of care antigen test the IdNow test has no market. Rather than being a rapid antigen test it is a molecular test and requires a separate machine to read the result. And thirdly, it performs worse than the tests just purchased from the WHO. The IDNow tests performance even prompted a bulletin from the FDA. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-informs-public-about-possible-accuracy-concerns-abbott-id-now-point
Now Abbott’s left with millions of IDNow tests and test reading machines that are effectively obsolete. It would appear that in our new world Covid-19 tests become obsolete faster than your new smartphone. But then the miracle happens, the folks from procurement come along. Like money falling from the sky it looks like Abbott can pull the test and the machines out of their surplus warehouse, dust them off and sell them to Canada. And for now the Liberals have dodged a bullet. They tell Canadians that they’ve got dibs on these test, they sneak through an overnight approval and hope nobody notices that they are buying an obsolete test with a caution from rather FDA, a that the WHO wouldn’t even send to low and middle class countries.