DoorDash to stock COVID-19 test kits for home delivery

 The people who bring you lunch can now also deliver a COVID-19 diagnostic test, as screening for the pandemic disease continues to become a more ubiquitous part of everyday life.

DoorDash has partnered up with the home-testing companies Everlywell and Vault Health to make sample collection kits available on-demand through its app, alongside sandwiches, pizza and takeout.

Both companies’ kits have been authorized by the FDA, and include the swabs and tubes necessary to gather nasal or saliva samples, and then ship them to a laboratory for results in one to two days. 

The delivery app will begin rolling out the kits to 12 DashMart locations in major U.S. metro areas—its line of 24/7 virtual convenience stores, backed by partnerships with 7-Eleven, Walgreens, CVS, Wawa and more. Additional cities are slated for the coming months.

"Amidst the pandemic, one of our priorities has been to make health and wellness essentials more accessible for customers, with the goal of helping businesses leverage our last-mile logistics infrastructure to provide more convenient and timely access to their health supplies," said Anna Katherine Barnett-Hart, director of new verticals at DoorDash, which aims to deliver the test kits in less than an hour.

Everlywell’s nasal swab test, for $109, is for adults 18 and older and includes a telehealth consult with a physician. Vault Health’s $119 test can be completed by people of all ages, including children under 18 with adult supervision—and both kits can be ordered regardless of whether a person is showing symptoms.

"As many as 30 percent of people skip doctor's appointments because they don't have a reliable way of getting there," said Everlywell’s head of clinical affairs, Marisa Cruz. "The fact that you can now get a kit delivered to your door in hours, quickly collect a sample and drop your kit in the mail, and then receive an accurate COVID-19 diagnosis and speak to a physician about next steps in as little as 24 hours later is a significant step forward for public health."

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/doordash-to-stock-covid-19-test-kits-for-home-delivery