The COVID-19 has been spreading through the world, and yet we here in the US don’t have enough test kits to get ahead of the game in combating the infections. This begs the question of why? Or why not?
According to the ScienceMag.org, “the World Health Organization (WHO) has shipped testing kits to 57 countries. China had five commercial tests on the market 1 month ago and can now do up to 1.6 million tests a week; South Korea has tested 65,000 people so far. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in contrast, has done only 459 tests since the epidemic began.”
Whisky Tango Foxtrot! What have we been doing? The answer is worse than the question.
Dated 28 February 2020, the article continues, “The rollout of a CDC-designed test kit to state and local labs has become a fiasco because it contained a faulty reagent. Labs around the country eager to test more suspected cases—and test them faster—have been unable to do so. No commercial or state labs have the approval to use their own tests.”
So without enough test kits, the currently reported 164 cases of COVID-19 in the US is underestimating the severity of this epidemic. Further, the snafu goes beyond the test kits. “When the United States declared the outbreak a public health emergency on 31 January, a bureaucratic process kicked in that requires FDA’s “emergency use approval” for any tests.”
This ties the hands for the rest of the country to diagnose the COVID-19. Go figure!
Do you think Messrs. Trump, Pence, Azar know what they are doing?
3/07/2020 Update – while the COVID-19 is no worse yet than the seasonal flu, the US government snafu continues.
Running with Buddha 
I’m pretty sure that Johns Hopkins, MGH, Mayo Clinic et al are fully qualified to sequence virus samples from sick people.
Why do people think that only tests put together by the CDC will work. Obviously they do not.
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Exactly Andy. It’s politics and bureaucracy. The COVID-19 virus has been mapped by a consortium of universities with a drug under development that will stop the virus. More at https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-coronavirus-protein-mapped-chicago-reveals-drug-target
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