WESTBROOK, Maine — EDITORS NOTE: Above video was published July 8, 2021, when Abbott announced local layoffs.
Abbott Laboratories, the leading manufacturer of one of America's most sought-after COVID-19 rapid tests, is responding to accusations that it forced its employees to trash the most demanded test kits because sales plummeted as COVID case numbers steadily declined, according to a New York Times investigation.
According to the report, after spending most of June and July taking apart and placing parts of the BinaxNOW COVID-19 antigen test kits in trash bags, workers were then told by a site manager at the Westbrook, Maine location that the company was letting go of 2,000 of its employees. Workers were also told the company was shuttering the only other test manufacturing plant in Illinois because coronavirus cases were dropping. “The numbers are going down,” the report states. “This is all about money.”
In response to the New York Times findings, Abbott said in a statement, “We have not destroyed any finished BinaxNOW product, nor have we destroyed any usable test components needed by the market that could have been donated.”
The company does admit that the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine paired with lower coronavirus cases were the reasons the manufacturer trashed some of its products.
“In May, as vaccinations climbed and summer arrived, demand for testing plummeted, and public health guidelines told vaccinated people to refrain from testing unless they had symptoms." Robert B. Ford, Abbott’s chief executive, said during an interview with the New York Times. He said that the test materials that employees destroyed "should not be viewed as tests."
According to the company's response late Friday night, "the lots of card components, shown in the photos in The New York Times article (143608R and 143467R), were at the seven-month shelf life and were disposed of in accordance with our standard inventory management process." The New York Times claims that the photos of approximately 8.6 million Abbott test cards were not set to expire for at least seven months in early 2022.
According to the New York Times, many of Abbott's immigrant workers from African countries were upset at having to trash products that their home countries could have used.
NEWS CENTER Maine asked for a response to this specific piece of the report, but the company would not comment past Friday's written release.
Dr. Sergio Carmona, chief medical officer of FIND, a nonprofit that promotes access to diagnostics, told the Times that it "makes me feel sick," to find out that the tests were trashed because Abbott could have donated them to many African countries that cannot afford to buy them.
Ford responded by saying the BinaxNOW product could not be shipped to Africa because the product is not registered internationally. However, the New York Times investigation found that "the company did, in fact, send a million tests to India in May, paid for by the U.S. government."
Abbott Labs said in Friday's statement that they are ready to meet the new demands caused by the Delta variant. The company said they would produce more because they saved test components, such as swabs, bottles, packaging, strips, and even labeling products. “In fact, because Abbott maintained usable test components, we're now able to scale up,” wrote Abbott in its response statement.
This statement contradicts the finding of the New York Times investigation, which found that “Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future.”
While Abbot did not fully address their current efforts to meet the resurgence in test kit demand, the company pledges, "Abbott has always worked in the best interests of public health through this pandemic and will continue to do so."
Abbott would not comment to NEWS CENTER Maine on the status of any attempt to re-hire workers that had been previously laid off from the Maine plants.