Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, Mass, announced that FDA has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Thermo Fisher Scientific Amplitude Solution with the TaqPath Covid-19 High-Throughput Combo Kit.

The Amplitude Solution enables clinical and public health laboratories to scale gold standard PCR testing and process up to 8,000 samples in a single day with minimal staffing resources and a secured supply of kits, reagents, and consumables to meet their testing needs. It has been implemented globally including labs in Europe and Japan.

“While covid-19 cases globally may be decreasing in some areas as vaccines become more widely available, there continues to be a demand for frequent routine testing to control future outbreaks,” says Mark Stevenson, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “For population-wide testing programs, lab-based PCR is the best fitting technology, providing confidence in results, capacity to process thousands of samples a day, and consistent, reliable turnaround times. The Amplitude Solution can help support a systematic testing strategy by enabling labs to quickly scale their testing and begin processing high-volume samples, even with limited personnel.”

The Amplitude Solution is a molecular diagnostic testing system that helps clinical labs expand testing capacity by combining Thermo Fisher’s extraction and real-time PCR instruments with liquid handling products from Tecan Group. The modular system utilizes a high-throughput version of Thermo Fisher’s Applied Biosystems TaqPath Covid-19 Combo Kit, which received EUA in March 2020, to process samples in four steps with minimal hands-on time and laboratory space requirements. The kit’s multi-gene target design and updated interpretive software may help labs detect SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Testing with the Amplitude Solution with the TaqPath Covid-19 High-Throughput Combo Kit is limited to laboratories certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA), 42 U.S.C. 263a, to perform high-complexity tests, or by similarly qualified non-U.S. laboratories.

The Amplitude Solution with the TaqPath Covid-19 High-Throughput Combo Kit has not been FDA cleared or approved and is only authorized for the duration of the EUA granted under Section 564(b)(1) of the Act, 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(b)(1), unless the authorization is terminated or revoked sooner.

For more information on the Amplitude Solution, visit Thermo Fisher Scientific

Featured image: Thermo Fisher Scientific Amplitude Solution (Courtesy: Thermo Fisher Scientific)