Skip to main content

The FDA has shut down a Bill Gates-backed coronavirus testing program

 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted, at least temporarily, a Seattle-based at-home coronavirus testing program backed by Bill Gates.

Recommended Videos

“Please discontinue patient testing and return of diagnostic results to patients until proper authorization is obtained,” the FDA told the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) in a memo, according to The New York Times.

“The FDA has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN’s test, but we have been asked to pause testing until we receive that additional authorization,” according to an update on the SCAN website. There are currently only a couple of at-home coronavirus tests with FDA authorization.

SCAN, which involved a number of institutions, including the University of Washington Medicine and backed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was sending free test kits to participants.

The goal was to test people both with and without symptoms to get a sense of how widespread COVID-19 is in the Seattle area. The FDA requires any coronavirus tests to receive an emergency use authorization (EUA) before being used. Gates announced the program on Tuesday, May 13, and the FDA sent the memo asking SCAN to pause on Wednesday.

Bill Gates
NurPhoto / Getty Images

“As SCAN gathers more test results in the weeks ahead, researchers expect the new data to provide a better sense of the number of infections and serve as one source to help answer other questions, like when physical distancing measures can be relaxed,” Gates wrote on his blog.

The test kits included a nasal swab that participants would then return to one of the institutions involved in the program. They would be able to see the results of their test in a couple of days. SCAN would track results and demographic data — including age, gender, race, and ZIP code — to learn more about which members of the population are most at risk and to assess how social distancing measures are working. The program said it had the capacity to analyze 1,000 tests a day.

Testing for COVID-19 has been slow to get up and running in the United States for a number of reasons. It’s not clear how quickly the SCAN program could receive an EUA and get back to testing.

Jenny McGrath
Former Senior Writer, Home
Jenny McGrath is a senior writer at Digital Trends covering the intersection of tech and the arts and the environment. Before…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more