RE: Next week28 Feb 2020 15:03
Currently, just seven state and local health departments have the ability to screen for the virus, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) said on Wednesday. CDC-developed tests issued three weeks ago were producing inaccurate results in some labs, so new tests had to be made and cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), leaving many labs with no local testing capability, the group said.
The CDC and FDA have worked out a fix that will allow 40 more public health labs to do testing by the end of next week, the APHL’s Chief Executive Scott Becker told Reuters.
In the meantime, the burden has fallen largely on the CDC, which does testing for most of the country on its campus in Atlanta.
“Unfortunately, we are now in the bottom tier in countries capable of doing population-based testing,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
U.S. patients typically wait 24 to 48 hours to find out whether they have tested positive and need to be quarantined, health officials said, during which time those who are infected can spread the virus to others
The CDC’s test is restricted solely for use by public health labs, but if the virus begins spreading widely in the United States, hospitals will need to be able to do the tests themselves, public health experts say. Such testing is typically done using kits produced by commercial companies. Several privately developed tests are in the works, but none have yet won approval from the FDA.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-usa-preparedness/mixed-messages-test-delays-hamper-u-s-coronavirus-response-idUSKCN20L36Z
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