Former Google and Meta executive launches at-home COVID-19 test

A new medical testing startup called Detect began selling at-home molecular COVID-19 tests through its website last week. The company also announced its CEO — Hugo Barra, a former executive at companies like Meta and Google who previously worked on hardware products like smartphones and virtual reality.

The timing was sadly serendipitous — the launch coincided with a near-unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases in the United States, driven by the omicron variant. It’s nearly impossible to find an at-home test for the virus. Detect’s website shows that its tests are sold out and notes that “limited quantities” will be available at noon each day.

“During this kind of high pressure, high tension period, where people really need these tests, we’re operating just in time — we receive inventory, we put it up for sale and literally ship it out the door,” Barra told The Verge. Right now, customers are limited to one test per household, spokesperson Anthony Ramos said in an email to The Verge. Detect’s multi-use testing platform and one single-use test sells for $75. Additional tests are $49 each.

Detect’s tests look for the virus’s genetic material, like the PCR tests that get sent to laboratories for analysis. The company joins a handful of other groups making similar at-home molecular tests. They’re different from rapid at-home antigen tests, which look for proteins on the surface of the virus (and can be less accurate than molecular tests).

Molecular testing is an unusual career pivot for someone like Barra, who previously worked on Android product management at Google, with Chinese cellphone maker Xiaomi, and on the virtual reality team at Facebook (now Meta). He told The Verge that he started working with Detect founder Jonathan Rothberg while he was still at Meta, which he left in May of this year to join Detect full-time. Barra says he was interested in taking his experiences in electronics and tech products and applying them to consumer-focused health technology. Health products often look and feel like they were designed a decade or two ago, he says, and aren’t on the same level as consumer electronic products like smartphones and virtual reality headsets in terms of their user experience.

“Part of my impetus to come into the health tech world, and specifically the consumer health world, was to try and bring that sort of DNA — no pun intended — and these playbooks from the consumer electronics world,” Barra says. While Detect formed specifically to build a COVID-19 test, it aims to expand its test offerings to things like sexually transmitted infections and other respiratory illnesses, according to Barra.

The Verge talked with Barra about making the transition from consumer tech to health and how Detect plans to grow during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Detect launched with the goal of testing for COVID-19. Are you planning to expand to other viruses?

The platform we built can be reprogrammed to target any other sort of genetic target. We have plans to release home tests in a few different spaces….