New York State is going to invest in private companies that are pushing the envelope with COVID-19 testing.
Governor Andrew Cuomo made the announcement on Tuesday, in an effort to bring testing to scale across New York.
“We’ve been working to reduce the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive actions to reduce density, increase testing and properly equip and staff our hospitals, and we’re also looking at how to restart the economy in a thoughtful and responsible way,” Governor Cuomo said in a press release. “This is not a light switch that we can just flick on one day and everything goes back to normal. We have to come up with a smart approach to restart the systems we shut down so abruptly, and testing is going to be one of the key components of that. We are going to continue working to get rapid testing up to scale so we can get people back to work.”
Businesses who are interested in working with New York to manufacture rapid tests on a large scale will be working through Empire State Development.
Cuomo also announced a test developed by the state’s Department of Health to identify antibodies. Officials from the governor’s office say this test is an important step towards determining whether New Yorkers are developing immunity and when they could potentially return to work or school.
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