The U.S. has done very little testing for the coronavirus. And thanks to problems at the CDC, it’s not clear when the country’s testing capacity will improve
Coronavirus samples at a laboratory in Scotland. Photo: WPA Pool/Getty Images As cases of COVID-19 continue to spike around the world, the CDC warned on Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the likelihood that the coronavirus will eventually spread here. Amid escalating outbreaks outside of China, it’s clear that there has been undetected transmission of the virus from countries with which the U.S. has not restricted travel.
There is no centralized count of how many people are being monitored or have been asked to self-quarantine by local and state health officials around the country. As of Tuesday, only a dozen or so state and local health departments can currently test for the virus, and positive results still have to be confirmed by the CDC in Atlanta, according to Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Meanwhile, Politico reported last week that only three out of 100 public health laboratories in the U.S. could test for COVID-19, according to a lab industry official.
The CDC, with the FDA’s approval, had rapidly developed a test kit for the coronavirus, but after shipping it to state laboratories, additional testing of the kit determined that it had a faulty component and had to be scrapped. The CDC has been actively developing a new test kit since then, but no one seems to know when it will be finished and distributed. Messonnier, the CDC official, said on Tuesday that she thought the agency was “close” to being done with the new test.
The nation’s public health laboratories, exasperated by the malfunctioning tests in the face of a global public health emergency, have taken the unusual step of appealing to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to develop and use their own tests. In Hawaii, authorities are so alarmed about the lack of testing ability that they requested permission from the CDC to use tests from Japan.
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