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4 Key Resons Why U.S. is So Behind in Testing: Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/Olga Khazan March 13, 2020,....(couple of weeks old) still very complete if you read entire article..
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Despite the fact that last week, Vice President Mike Pence promised that roughly 1.5 million tests would soon be available, an ongoing Atlantic investigation can confirm only that 13,953 tests have been conducted nationally. New York, which has shut down Broadway and has at least 328 coronavirus cases, is still failing to test patients who have worrying symptoms. As late as March 6, a busy clinic in Brownsville, Texas, a border city of nearly 200,000 whose population crosses back and forth from Mexico frequently, told me they could test only three people. By comparison, South Korea, which has one of the largest outbreaks outside China, is testing nearly 20,000 people a day.
Testing is essential for identifying people who have been infected and for understanding the true scope of the outbreak. But when the initial test from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was rolled out to state public-health laboratories in early February, one of its components was discovered to be faulty. Since then, academic, clinical, and other laboratories have struggled to get or make new tests and diagnose patients
Though some elements of the breakdown are by now understood, the full extent of the difficulties laboratory directors have faced has remained largely opaque. Interviews with laboratory directors and public-health experts reveal a Fyre Festivallike cascade of problems that have led to a dearth of tests at a time when America desperately needs them. The issues began with onerous requirements for the labs that make the tests, continued because of arcane hurdles that prevented researchers from getting the right supplies, and extended to a White House that seemed to lack cohesion in the pandemics early days. Getting out lots of tests for a new disease is a major logistical and scientific challenge, but it can be pulled off with the help of highly efficient, effective government leadership. In this case, such leadership didnt appear to exist.
Here are the four main reasons the testing issues have been so bad:
1. RED TAPE
The Food and Drug Administration has a protocol called emergency use authorization, or EUA, through which it clears tests from labs around the country for use in an outbreak. Getting more of these tests up and running would greatly increase the capacity of doctors and public-health officials to screen patients for the coronavirus.
Former FDA officials I spoke with said that during past outbreaks, EUAs could be granted in just a couple of days. But this time, the requirements for getting an EUA were so complicated that it would have taken weeks to receive one, says Alex Greninger, the assistant director of the virology division at the University of Washington Medical Center, which is located right near the heart of the American outbreak. Greninger told me clinical labs were not allowed to begin testing at all before they had received the EUA, even if they had already internally made sure their tests worked. Though these regulations are in place to ensure that faulty lab tests dont get used on patients, several microbiologists told me they felt the precautions were excessive for a fast-moving outbreak of this scale. The speed of this virus versus the speed of the FDA and the EUA process is mismatched, he said.
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4 Key Resons Why U.S. is So Behind in Testing: Atlantic (Original Post)
Stuart G
Mar 2020
OP
Testing is central to control of epidemics; that and mask wearing. We did neither.
SunSeeker
Mar 2020
#1
SunSeeker
(51,377 posts)1. Testing is central to control of epidemics; that and mask wearing. We did neither.
The CDC has actually told medical workers to wear homemade masks or bandannas if they run out of masks. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/face-masks.html We don't have enough N95 masks. Sure, it is a pathetic and desperate situation that we should not be in. But we are. And these sewn masks, especially ones that hold filters and have twist ties sewn in to act as nose clips, will work a lot better than bandannas. You should consider making some, if not for our nurses, for yourself. http://xobonmag.com/project/fabric-face-mask/