LetsGetChecked’s Covid-19 test pitch to Simon Harris

Dublin startup LetsGetChecked makes at-home health testing kits for various conditions and illnesses. It raised $71 million from VCs earlier in the year and this week scored a pretty big deal with American Airlines to provide its Covid-19 test for pre-flight testing, according to the Irish Times. It’s only being tested on one flight route so far so details are a little hazy on exactly how it will be distributed to passengers and how quickly it can get results — it does have FDA emergency use approval though.

The company has been around since 2015 but was quick to jump into the market for Covid-19 testing and it clearly had aspirations to roll out tests in Ireland.

On March 16, at the very beginning of what would become lockdown, LetsGetChecked’s CEO Peter Foley wrote to then health minister Simon Harris about the “lack of access to coronavirus testing” and that the company was working on a test as well as an antibody test.

“I would like to point out that we have no intention of seeking to profit from this health crisis and we will be seeking to sell the tests at the lowest possible price,” Foley wrote.

He quickly followed that up on March 26 with another letter to Harris, which was also sent to Paul Reid, with an update on its testing capacity, saying at the time that it was capable of handling 10,000 tests a day and could scale that to 100,000 in two months. This was followed by some details on how its tests are delivered and collected in the US and could be replicated in Ireland.