Abbott To Hire 2,000 In Gurnee To Make COVID-19 Rapid Test

GURNEE, IL — Abbott Laboratories is hiring hundreds to assist in the production of its new portable COVID-19 rapid test at a manufacturing facility in Gurnee. The company announced it will add 2,000 new temporary positions that “do not require technical experience and can be trained on the job.”

Work has been underway since May to convert a 255,000-square-foot building at 605 Tri-State Parkway in Gurnee for use in quickly producing the new tests, which received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week. Village officials say Abbott has applied for a certificate of occupancy inspection with the hopes of being at 50 percent of its operating capacity by next weekend, according to the Daily Herald. The vacant building was formerly occupied by a pharmaceutical company through 2018.

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The new test, called BinaxNow COVID-19 Ag Card, is about the size of a credit card, requires no additional equipment, will provide results within 15 minutes and will cost about $5, company officials announced.

Abbott Labs plans to ship tens of millions of the new tests in September with a goal of producing 50 million tests a month by the start of October, according to company officials. They said Abbott has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since April to manufacture new tests at a massive scale.
The test is conducted using nasal swabs. It functions similar to a pregnancy test — an additional line appears on the card when a sample tests positive for the COVID-19 virus.

Related:

• New Abbott Labs Rapid Coronavirus Test Receives FDA Authorization
• Abbott Labs Ships Over 1 Million Rapid Coronavirus Tests To Every State
• Abbott Labs Gets Emergency Approval For Rapid Coronavirus Test
• 2nd Abbott Labs Coronavirus Antibody Test Gets Emergency Approval
• Coronavirus Test Made By Abbott Labs Wins Emergency FDA Approval

“Abbott is committed to developing important tools to help fight COVID-19,” said Vildan Kehr, divisional vice president, Talent and Acquisition, Abbott. “These jobs will not only make that possible, but also help Americans feel a little more confident about their health and lives.”

The Gurnee facility is one of two in the U.S. where the new test will be manufactured. The other facility will be in Westbrook, Maine.

Those interested in applying for a position at the Gurnee facility can send an e-mail to RecruitingProject@abbott.com. Be sure to put “Gurnee” in the subject line. You can also learn more on the Abbott website.

To date, Abbott has launched six tests in the U.S. for COVID-19 since the beginning of the
pandemic. The tests range from rapid point-of-care tests to detect the virus in minutes to lab-
based molecular and antibody tests. The company has delivered more than 27 million tests to all states in the U.S., according to a news release from Abbott.