HOW I GOT COVID-19 TESTS TO MARKET IN TWO WEEKS

“I went outside for the first time in six days,” said Everlywell founder and CEO Julia Cheek, via Zoom from her living room in Austin in late March. “I’ve been working 20 hours a day.” Cheek, 36, was three weeks removed from a decision she’d made for Everlywell to offer tests for Covid-19. In the time since, the company had been battered by conflicting and confusing guidance from the federal government, a national economic tailspin, and frantic pleas for help from the public.

Everlywell makes at-home diagnostic tests for common health issues, such as sexually transmitted diseases and vitamin deficiencies. After a health scare opened Cheek’s eyes to the frustrating costs and lack of transparency in lab testing, she left her role as Moneygram’s VP of corporate strategy to found Everlywell in 2015. By selling tests directly to consumers or through retailers like Target, and then processing the results through independent labs, Everlywell is challenging the status quo in an industry dominated by two massive incumbents, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp. Recently, the 90-person company was named the third-fastest-growing in this year’s Inc. 5000 Series: Texas.

None of that prepared Cheek for trying to respond to the coronavirus pandemic at a moment when the government was woefully behind on testing availability and infrastructure—even as hospitals were reeling and patients were dying.

I had no intention of our getting involved in Covid-19 testing.

I was following the news to the same extent that I think most Americans were when the disease was starting to become a problem in China. Back in the third week of January, our chief medical officer, Frank Ong, and I were flying from Boston to Chicago. He and his wife are both doctors, and he said, “You know, Julia, this virus in Wuhan, I’ve been watching it, and I believe it could become a global pandemic.”