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The Trump administration unveiled Thursday a $750 million deal to buy 150 million rapid Covid-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories, a move that would substantially expand the nation’s capacity for rapid testing. The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday granted emergency-use authorization to the company for a $5 rapid-response Covid-19 antigen test that is roughly the size of a credit card. The test could be administered in a doctor’s or school nurse’s office and uses technology similar to home pregnancy tests. It returns results in about 15 minutes. (Ballhaus, 8/28)

The Trump administration plans to purchase nearly all of the new rapid COVID-19 tests that Abbott Labs will manufacture this year, a White House official confirmed. The administration will purchase 150 million tests as part of the $750 million deal, which President Trump is expected to announce later Thursday during his speech to accept the GOP presidential nomination during the Republican National Convention. (Weixel, 8/27)

“This is a major development that will help our country to remain open, get Americans back to work, and kids back to school!” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted late Thursday afternoon. The move is the federal government’s biggest step into testing for the virus that has killed more than 177,000 Americans and infected more than 5.8 million. Almost since the pandemic arrived on U.S. shores in January, Trump has insisted that testing was mainly the province of state and local authorities. (Bernstein and Min Kim, 8/27)

The maker of a recently approved rapid test for the virus that causes COVID-19 says it is planning to hire 1,200 people at a new manufacturing plant in Westbrook, Maine, as it ramps up production of the new product. Abbott Laboratories, based in Illinois, said it is creating 300 permanent jobs and 900 temporary positions for the site near Portland, where it will make a new test for antigens, or proteins, found on the surface of the virus. (Rosen, 8/27)

President Trump on Thursday pledged a Covid-19 vaccine would be available by the end of 2020, the most concrete claim he has made yet about the timetable for coronavirus vaccine development. “We are delivering life-saving therapies, and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner,” he said. (Facher, 8/27)

The boldest promise Trump made — repeatedly — in his lengthy speech Thursday was that there would be a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. “We are delivering lifesaving therapies and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year — or maybe even sooner,” Trump said. He added later: “We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and we will crush the virus.”Trump, delivering his speech from the legally problematic perch of the White House’s South Lawn, notably went further than Vice President Pence had gone the night before. Pence said merely that “we’re on track to have the world’s first safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year.” (Blake, 8/27)

The World Health Organization will next week receive a raft of pledges of support for its plan for COVID-19 vaccines for all. But the agency has already had to scale back its ambition. The United States, Japan, Britain and the European Union have struck their own deals to secure millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses for their citizens, ignoring the U.N. body’s warnings that “vaccine nationalism” will squeeze supplies. (Kelland, Guarascio and Nebehay, 8/28)