1 June 2020 - - US-based health intelligence company Sema4 has inked a formal partnership with the State of Connecticut to be a COVID-19 testing provider for Connecticut residents, the company said.

Sema4 will now provide additional testing to state employees, first responders, residents of long-term care facilities, and patients requiring care at primary care facilities, among others.

Sema4 is expanding its current COVID-19 viral testing capacity to 10,000 tests per day in early June. Sema4 will also offer antibody testing to identify people who have already been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and have mounted an immune response, with the ability to process 5,000 tests per day by the end of June.

To aid employers in managing back-to-work programs when needed, Sema4 will provide an even more complete, end-to-end digital solution for those ordering and receiving these tests, including portals for registering employees, tracking samples, and reporting results to providers and patients/employees, and to the State.

A more complete end-to-end digital solution and increased viral testing capacity, coupled with the introduction of antibody testing, builds upon the steps that Sema4 has already taken to help combat COVID-19 in Connecticut.

Since April, Sema4 has been collaborating with the State and has performed thousands of COVID-19 viral tests in its Branford, Connecticut laboratory for approximately 30 Connecticut-based health care facilities.

Sema4, which delivers genomic solutions to hundreds of thousands of patients every year to support women's health and precision oncology care, is actively scaling up its Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments -certified and College of American Pathologists -accredited laboratory in Branford, Connecticut to expand COVID-19 testing capacity.

Sema4 accepts saliva, nasal swab, and oral swab samples, which are currently collected by a healthcare provider or at an authorised collection site.

Sema4 will also soon be accepting saliva collected at home (FDA Emergency Use Authorization -submitted). Testing is offered with no out-of-pocket cost to Connecticut residents.

The COVID-19 viral tests used by Sema4 are manufactured by PerkinElmer and the antibody tests are run on the Abbott AlinityTM system.

Both tests have been validated in accordance with the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization, and achieve the highest levels of sensitivity and specificity that have been demonstrated for these types of COVID-19 tests.

Results are returned within approximately 24 hours of receiving the sample for the viral test and within around 48 hours for the antibody test.