- The stock price of Applied DNA Sciences Inc (NASDAQ: APDN) increased by over 33% during intraday trading. This is why it happened.
The stock price of Applied DNA Sciences Inc (NASDAQ: APDN) – a leader in Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)-based DNA manufacturing and nucleic acid-based technologies – increased by over 33% during intraday trading. Investors are responding positively to Applied DNA Sciences announcing that its wholly-owned subsidiary Applied DNA Clinical Labs, LLC, (ADCL) was awarded a competitively-bid COVID-19 testing contract by the City University of New York (CUNY) Board of Trustees to facilitate the University’s reopening in the fall. The contract term is 12 months, has a maximum value not to exceed $35.0 million, and contains no minimum weekly testing commitment.
The contract specifies ADCL’s deployment of safeCircle — its high-throughput pooled COVID-19 testing program — to provide weekly asymptomatic diagnostic COVID-19 screening of on-campus unvaccinated students, staff, and faculty, and a random sampling of vaccinated individuals across the CUNY school system. And ADCL’s solution includes the use of subcontractor CLEARED4’s health verification platform for appointments, sample tracking, and value-add services of campus access management.
As a prime contractor, ADCL will also provide on-site staffing and sample transport, and logistics. And CUNY projects weekly testing in the range of 20,000 to 65,000 tests over the period of the Contract. The testing levels are contingent on vaccination rates, the ratio of in-person versus remote attendance, and positivity rates within the CUNY population.
CUNY — the nation’s largest urban public university spanning 25 colleges across New York City’s five boroughs — will offer in-person and hybrid classes for the upcoming semester that will bring together a mixed population of individuals vaccinated and unvaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. And for CUNY, the contract operationalizes the CDC’s ‘Guidance for Institutions of Higher Education’ aimed at disease control and minimizing the risk of exposure in education settings.
The testing under the contract will commence in early August 2021, and all sample collection sites will be fully operational before the start of the academic year on August 25. And testing will be conducted at ACDL’s CLEP/CLIA-certified laboratory using the company’s Linea COVID-19 Assay Kit both in a pooled diagnostic screening modality and to perform reflex individual diagnostic testing of samples contained in a positive pool.
KEY QUOTES:
“This award reflects execution on our strategy to position safeCircle’s COVID-19 testing offerings in front of high-frequency, high-volume testing opportunities in the marketplace, including those funded by Federal and State monies released since the start of the pandemic that are earmarked to fund States’ reopening strategies. Having spent the last calendar year putting into place the constituent components for a high-throughput clinical laboratory for COVID-19 testing, this award is a significant milestone for the Company’s Diagnostics business. Our goal is to help CUNY provide the safest environment for its diverse local and international population in what is possibly one of the largest testing cohorts in the nation.”
“As the national educational system enters its second full year under the pandemic, the confluence of vaccine clinical successes, vaccine hesitancy, and the rise of variants sets the stage for a more complex testing environment. We believe we are uniquely positioned to address these circumstances with our high-throughput testing facility, as experts in pooled COVID-19 testing to address the needs of large groups, and with our SGS™ Mutation Panel and its ability to identify certain mutations that characterize emerging variants. To that end, we are pursuing other private sector, State and local government-level contract opportunities with the full breadth of our safeCircle offerings.”
— Dr. James A. Hayward, president and CEO of Applied DNA
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