Your Economy (No Politics)

[mr40]

The fact is Coronavirus is a NEW virus and you don't stock thousands of test kits for something that didn't exist until late Dec.

And you don't produce a test kit for a new virus overnight!

As of Monday night, the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. surpassed 750 across more than 30 states and the District of Columbia. The U.S. death toll rose to 26, with 22 in Washington and two each in California and Florida.

CDC developed and shipped testing kits in early February to state and local public health labs to begin testing for coronavirus. But a test kit glitch left state and local public health labs unable to confirm the test results. The flaw delayed rapid testing among state and local labs.

Private labs and academic hospitals didn’t get the green light to develop and use their own diagnostics until several weeks later. That delayed testing and left even patients with symptoms of, or exposure to COVID-19 unable to get tested.

The CDC said 78 public health labs in 50 states were testing for the virus as of Monday. The agency also relaxed testing guidelines to allow more people to get tested. Both academic labs and large private lab testing companies such as LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics are rolling out coronavirus tests after receiving FDA authorization.

Ben Pinsky, medical director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory for Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s Health, said its lab was up and running in less than a month and "we're working on ramping up capacity as fast as we can." Stanford is now doing the testing for Stanford Medical Center, as well as the University of California San Francisco's hospital and Kaiser Permanente.

Pinsky said he became concerned about the number of cases in China in late January and started evaluating the test his lab is using in early February.
They were developing the test while they were in the process of applying to the FDA for permission to test, but it was still a time consuming process. Components were ordered from different suppliers, assembled and validated before they could be used.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/09/former-fda-chief-scott-gottlieb-warns-sharp-increase-u-s-coronavirus-cases/5003087002/