Exact Sciences will cut pay and reduce staff to respond to a reduction in the demand for the company’s at-home cancer screening services during the COVID-19 crisis, according to a report by the Wisconsin State Journal. For the last two weeks of March, the company saw a 36 percent decrease from last year for Cologuard, which screens people for colon cancer genetic markers. The decline in demand continued into April with a 63 percent decrease as compared to the same period last year.
Meanwhile, in a related report, the company stated it’s ready to process 20,000 coronavirus tests per week, expanding Wisconsin’s testing capacity. Last year, Exact Sciences processed 1.7 million colon cancer tests, more than 30,000 a week on average. The instruments that processed those tests can be modified to look for genetic markers of the coronavirus.
