Amazon Care is offering assistance to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a plan to deliver coronavirus test kits to Seattle homes, CNBC reports.
The plan as described would be a grand convergence involving two major players on Seattle’s tech scene, plus the University of Washington and the Seattle Flu Study.
Amazon Care is an on-demand healthcare clinic that’s open on a pilot basis to Seattle-area Amazon employees and their families. CNBC quoted unnamed sources as saying Amazon has offered to come up with a plan to deliver the test kits, which include nasal swabs to take samples, at no cost.
In an email to GeekWire, an Amazon spokesperson said “we’re in discussions with leaders in public health about how we can help” – but didn’t provide further details.....MORE
Amazon’s involvement builds on the Gates Foundation’s plan to expand upon a program created by the Seattle Flu Study, a consortium of researchers that’s been tracking the spread of the coronavirus outbreak in the Seattle area for weeks.
This week, regulators stopped the Seattle Flu Study from performing tests for coronavirus and sharing the results, due to the fact that the researchers didn’t have approval for clinical applications of their testing protocol. But the study’s principal investigator, UW geneticist Jay Shendure, said he and his colleagues saw a “path forward” to resuming their work....
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