By Stephen Nakrosis

Abbott Labs on Wednesday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization for its BinaxNOW Covid-19 Ag Card rapid test for detection of Covid-19 infection.

The company said the test is "a rapid, reliable, highly portable, and affordable tool for detecting active coronavirus infections at massive scale," and added it "delivers results in just 15 minutes with no instrumentation, using proven lateral flow technology with demonstrated sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 98.5% in clinical study."

The company said the 15-minute test is easy to use, and added it will provide a no-charge complementary phone app, which will allow people to display their test results.

Abbott said it will charge $5 for the test, adding it "has invested hundreds of millions of dollars since April in two new U.S. facilities to manufacture BinaxNOW at massive scale." The company said it plans to eventually produce 50 million tests a month.

The company's shares are trading higher in Wednesday's after-hours market. At 6:63 p.m. EDT, the stock had gained 4.47% to trade at $107.80 a share. Volume in the late trading session topped 276,000 shares. 



  --Write to Stephen Nakrosis at stephen.nakrosis@wsj.com