A Nashville-based lab company is working with the U.S. government to increase monkeypox testing capacity, and the lab is relying on some of the same equipment it acquired to expand the country’s capacity for COVID testing.
Before COVID, Aegis Sciences was primarily a drug testing company. But when the pandemic hit, the lab company based in MetroCenter received big grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to staff up and buy the equipment for high-volume diagnostic testing. Aegis ended up running thousands of COVID tests a day.
“We have an existing, well-functioning, highly reproducible laboratory diagnostic engine, if you will,” Aegis senior vice president Matthew Hardison says. “And now, we’re able to use that — not just for COVID testing but also for this new monkeypox outbreak.”
Aegis also has connections with health departments in all 50 states and Puerto Rico that didn’t exist prior to COVID, so the company knows how each state needs data reported, Hardison says.
Federal health officials gave the monkeypox test to five lab companies around the country. Before offering mass testing, Aegis has to prove that its machinery is as reliable as smaller-scale testing done by public health departments. Testing is expected to begin before the end of the month.
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