Apple helps get COVID-19 test kits to millions of people around the country

Apple Covid Testing Manufacturing (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple has announced a partnership with COPAN Diagnostics that helped ship millions of COVID-19 tests.
Production was increased by almost 4,000% since April 2020.

Apple today announced that it has been working with COPAN Diagnostics to ship more than 15 million COVID-19 test kits to people around the United States.

The tests were made possible by a $10 million fund from Apple's Advanced Manufacturing Fund with production at COPAN's Southern California facilities increasing by almost 4,000% since April last year.

"We are proud our Advanced Manufacturing Fund is supporting companies like COPAN who are playing a critical role in the fight against COVID-19 and assisting healthcare professionals and communities across the country," said Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer. "This collaboration helped produce, ship, and deliver millions of sample collection kits to hospitals from coast to coast — and we believe it is this unique combination of American manufacturing and innovation that will help us emerge from this crisis and build a safer world for us all."

Notably, it appears that the tests provided by COPAN are the best around – enabling doctors and other health professionals to get what they need and when they need it.

Dr. Aleta Bonner is a pediatric emergency medicine physician in Temple, Texas, and has been studying the effects of respiratory viruses for more than two decades. When the pandemic caused a dramatic rise in cases in her community, she took time away from pediatric medicine to focus on collecting COVID-19 specimens and conducting a research study that would determine the most effective ways to test for the virus. Her hospital received the COPAN COVID-19 testing kits."The preferred specimen swabs are definitely COPAN's because of their superior collection capabilities," said Dr. Bonner. "And to hear how they ramped up to support those of us in the healthcare field — that is just an amazing feeling. We're all in this together because we can only do our job as well as the support that's behind us."

You can read all about what Apple and COPAN Diagnostics have been working on in Apple's Newsroom post.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.