130+ Mass. School To Receive Rapid COVID-19 Testing Kits By Early December

More than 130 Massachusetts schools will reportedly receive new, rapid COVID-19 testing supplies by early December, state health and education officials announced on Wednesday.

The supplies will be distributed to school districts, charters, collaboratives and special education systems as part of the first phase of the testing program, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeffrey Riley announced via WCVB.

Schools will need to meet various requirements to qualify which includes having at least some form of in-person classes, the ability to report results to the Massachusetts Department of Health and designated a staff member responsible for administering tests.

"This is a voluntary initiative with test kits provided to schools at no cost and designed to help schools continue to provide in-person instruction," Riley said via WCVB.

The testing program will be based on the Abbott BinaxNOW rapid testing system, which was previously distributed to Massachusetts and other U.S. states during the COVID-19 pandemic under a contract with the federal government after the tests were granted an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration in August, WCVB reports.

Abbott said test results typically show in about 15 minutes with high rates of specificity, but may be less accurate than traditional COVID-19 tests that go through laboratories. Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders had previously announced the Massachusetts Department of Health had performed its own testing on the Abbott system prior to Riley's announcement on Wednesday.

"The BinaxNOW rapid test was able to successfully detect COVID-19 in children and young people 79% of the time and in adults 97% of the time, if they had reported symptoms within the last week," Sudders said via WCVB. "Only five BinaxNOW tests during the entire study produced a false-positive result."

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