Apple Bets Big on COVID-19 Diagnostics Firm

Apple is awarding $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a market leader in COVID-19 sample collection kits. The investment will allow COPAN Diagnostics to accelerate its production of sample collection kits for hospitals in the US.

The funding will aid the company in producing more than a million kits per week by July, as opposed to the current limit of several thousands. Apple will also support COPAN Diagnostics’ expansion to a new facility in Southern California, which is said to create 50 new jobs. The place will have the latest tech including equipment that Cupertino helped design.

“We feel a deep sense of responsibility to do everything we can to help medical workers, patients, and communities support the global response to COVID-19,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer.

Besides this, Apple is also helping the company source equipment and materials from across the US, which includes ones Cupertino is helping design from K2 Kinetics, based in York, Pennsylvania, and MWES in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

This is a significant amount of resources and effort being channeled to a single entity, which signals Apple’s faith in COPAN Diagnostics. And rightly so, because the company’s sample collection kits are said to have revolutionized the diagnostic industry and play a critical role in the COVID-19 testing process.

In 2003, the company invented flocked swabs, a molded plastic applicator stick that has variable tips coated with Nylon fibers. This allows for the quick uptake and complete elution of a sample. COPAN’s UTM is the leading transport medium for collection, transport, preservation, and long-term freeze storage of clinical specimens containing viruses.