Responding to Coronavirus Testing Problems, US Government Expands Number of Labs That Can Run Tests

After a slow and criticized rollout of U.S. government-designed testing kits for the novel coronavirus COVID-19, federal agencies enforced new policies to scale up capacity to conduct tests and produce results more quickly. On Feb. 29, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) policy to allow more labs to apply for approval to conduct testing for COVID-19. Until the announcement, two labs run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a few state labs were the only ones in the country that could test for the disease. Expanding the number of labs that can perform COVID-19 testing is critical to getting a more accurate sense of how widespread the virus may be in the country. Some public health experts warn that the current number of cases in the US may be low simply because too few people have been tested; with more testing, the count in the country will likely rise. Already, the number of confirmed cases has increased from 62 on Feb. 28 to 101 on March 2. Government agencies can activate Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) review processes during extenuating circumstances such as an emerging disease outbreak. In this particular case, the EUA enables the CDC to use the test, which picks up genetic signatures of the coronavirus, even before the FDA finished reviewing data on the test’s efficacy—a process that normally takes months. It also means other labs that normally could develop and use tests against...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Infectious Disease Source Type: news