New instruments will provide COVID-19 results in minutes, but test kits are limited

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - State health officials are expecting a shipment of 15 Abbott rapid testing instruments to arrive on Tuesday, courtesy of the federal government.

They’re used to read the company’s new rapid COVID-19 test, which was granted emergency clearance for use by the FDA a little more than a week ago.

Roughly the size of a toaster, the instruments may prove to be a game changer in the fight against COVID-19.

“It’s like a flu test basically. And it can test positive within five minutes and by the time 13 minutes has passed you know if you’re negative,” Lt. Gov. Josh Green said.

Green says the plan says is to deploy the instruments to hospitals across the state. But for now it seems the number of people who will benefit from the new technology is limited.

“There’s a huge backlog on the number of test kits that are available for this particular instrument,” said state Health Director Bruce Anderson.

Anderson said the tests are being rationed, and added he expects to receive only enough kits to test 120 people each week for the foreseeable future.

So far, 14,079 people have been tested for coronavirus in Hawaii.

Private labs have done the bulk of the work with results taking anywhere from a few days to well over a week.

Detroit was one of the first cities to deploy the rapid tests. Last Thursday, they were made available to first responders who had been advised to self isolate but had not yet tested positive for the virus.

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