FDA limits emergency use requests for COVID-19 test kits

Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani discusses news that the FDA will limit how many emergency use requests it will review for COVID test kits.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: The FDA announcing that it's limiting the number of emergency use authorization requests for COVID-19 tests that it will review. Now Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani is here with the latest. Anjalee, I think the biggest question here is what this means for consumers who need those tests.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Well, Seana, I think the important point to point out is that it's not taking these tests off the shelves. It's simply reducing the emergency use authorization, which was put in place, as you know, because of the pandemic. There are now more than 430 different tests out there. And clearly, the supply is outstripping demand at this point in time.

Of course, we've already talked about how there's an increase in purchases of these tests in the last few weeks. Probably that will continue, but companies are nowhere near where they were in terms of a lack of capacity to produce these.

And so at this point in time, it's sort of the FDA pulling back and making sure that all the tests that are out there are actually good ones. There were some concerns earlier on that with the rush to get these to market and to get them in the hands of individuals who needed them, there was some possible quality concerns. And so this would help address that.