The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday it has launched a pilot program with five states to introduce a rapid, point-of-care Covid-19 test, using the same diagnostics the National Basketball Association employed to finish its season.
The pilot program — adopted by Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas and Alaska — is expected to run up to 100,000 tests per day by spring, according to the federal contract and HHS officials. The NBA relied on the tests, developed by California-based Cue Health, to create an isolation zone at Walt Disney World near Orlando to protect its players so they could finish out the last eight games of the 2019–20 regular season and 2020 playoffs.
