Testing times for Abbott

Abbott Laboratories shares leaped to an all-time high after the suburban Chicago-based healthcare company beat Wall Street’s first-quarter forecasts and said it’s ramping up production of a new test for the coronavirus. Abbott CEO Robert Ford said Abbott has been working with health officials to deploy two COVID-19 diagnostic tests that it launched last month. On Wednesday, Abbott launched an antibody
test that tells whether someone was previously infected. It will ship 4 million of these tests in April, rising to 20 million tests a month by June. Ford said Abbott is also “moving as fast as we can to develop additional tests, including a lab-based serology test to detect another important antibody, IgM, which we expect to launch in the near future.” Abbott shares closed up 6% Thursday at $96.00.