Thermo Fisher Scientific continues to support during the COVID-19 crisis

Thermo Fisher Scientific published that it had acquired a contract from the U.S. government to provide specific viral transport media (VTM) for COVID-19 sample collection, used during the acquisition of patient samples for transportation to labs that can detect the virus.

To guarantee the precision of COVID-19 test results, VTM must be produced and distributed into tubes in an aseptic environment. Currently, VTM is made at Thermo Fisher Scientific’s site in Kansas, which meets this demand, and the company has significantly increased its production from fifty thousand to over one million VTM-filled tubes per seven days.

Thermo Fisher will expand capacity in Lenexa with a forty-million dollar facility committed to quality control and VTM production; furthermore, the expanded space will allow Thermo Fisher to boost production to more than eight-million VTM-filled tubes, every seven days.

The President, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Marc N. Casper, stated: “Our production ramp-up in Lenexa has been impressive and our employees deserve recognition for their ingenuity and dedication to making this happen. We have a proven blueprint for high quality VTM production in Lenexa and look forward to bringing significant new capacity online as quickly as possible to continue the necessary testing ramp-up in the U.S. We’re proud of our role in helping customers to battle the pandemic. With our leading scale and depth of capabilities, Thermo Fisher can support virtually every aspect of the COVID-19 response, which demonstrates what it means to be the world leader in serving science.”