BioReference Laboratories, Inc., an OPKO Health company (NASDAQ: OPK), today announced that it will continue to prioritize COVID-19 testing for hospital inpatients and critically ill patients around the country.
"Our goal is to maintain the current 24 hour turnaround time for these patients," said Jon R. Cohen, M.D., Executive Chairman of BioReference Laboratories. "Nothing is more important than getting a timely result back to the medical personnel on the front lines making treatment decisions on a minute-to-minute basis."
"Multiple types of hospitals, for-profit, not-for-profit, large health systems, individual hospitals, academic medical centers, and community hospitals have all reached out to get their results in a timely fashion. We have now tested almost 200,000 patients and will continue to grow our capacity from 20,000 tests/day to 35,000 tests/day within the next week. While prioritizing hospital patients, at the same time we will continue to strive to keep our current turnaround time for non-hospital patients at 2-3 days from the time we receive the specimen," said Dr. Cohen.
Providers should refer to the most current CDC guidelines for further information on appropriate testing of patients, available here https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html.
About COVID-19 Testing at BioReference Laboratories, Inc.
BioReference Laboratories is accepting specimens for COVID-19 testing from healthcare providers, clinics and health systems throughout the United States to promote earlier diagnosis of the coronavirus and to aid in limiting spread of infection. In addition to its nationwide COVID-19 testing offering, BioReference has partnerships with the New York State Department of Health, the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation (NYC Health + Hospitals), the State of New Jersey, the State of Florida and the cities of Detroit and Miami to provide COVID-19 testing.
BioReference is offering a real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) assay with expected 24-72 hour turnaround time. The Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 test has been made available pursuant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization for diagnostic testing in CLIA certified high-complexity laboratories. All tests are conducted in BioReference's main laboratory in Elmwood Park, N.J., which currently has a capacity to run up to 20,000 COVID-19 tests per day. For more information, visit https://www.bioreference.com/coronavirus.
About BioReference Laboratories, Inc.
BioReference provides comprehensive testing to physicians, clinics, hospitals, employers, government units, correctional institutions and medical groups. The company is in network with the five largest health plans in the United States, operates a network of 10 laboratory locations, and is backed by a medical staff of more than 160 MD, PhD and other professional level clinicians and scientists. For more information, visit www.bioreference.com.
About OPKO Health
OPKO Health is a diversified healthcare company. In diagnostics, its BioReference Laboratories is one of the nation's largest full-service clinical laboratories; GeneDx is a rapidly growing genetic testing business; the 4Kscore® test is used to assess a patient's individual risk for aggressive prostate cancer following an elevated PSA and to help decide about next steps such as prostate biopsy; Claros® 1 is a point-of-care diagnostics platform with a total PSA test approved by the FDA. In our pharmaceutical pipeline, RAYALDEE is our first pharmaceutical product to be marketed. OPK88003, a once-weekly oxyntomodulin for type 2 diabetes and obesity - reported positive data from a Phase 2 clinical trial. It's among a new class of GLP-1/glucagon receptor dual agonists. OPK88004, a SARM (selective androgen receptor modulator) is currently being studied for various potential indications. The Company's most advanced product utilizing its CTP technology, a once-weekly human growth hormone for injection, successfully met its primary endpoint and key secondary endpoints in a Phase 3 study and is partnered with Pfizer. OPKO also has research, development, production and distribution facilities abroad.
