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Asthe new coronaviruscontinues to taint people around the cosmos , the boot to test for the virus has have on a raw urging . But the United States is lagging on that front , in part due to faulty test kits and strict regulations , experts told Live Science .
" We ’re not remotely prepared , " Dr. Alex Greninger , an adjunct professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and an assistant director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at the University of Washington Medical Center , told Live Science .
Lab technicians test samples from people suspected of having the COVID-19 coronavirus at a laboratory in Shenyang in China’s northeastern Liaoning province on Feb. 12, 2020.
presently , 57 individuals in the U.S. have COVID-19 , the illness associate with the novel coronavirus . The United States has been " exceptionally fortunate to not have [ had ] many case , " Greninger say , but the Trump administration has wasted precious time , which could have been used to develop and disseminate tests for the virus in all 50 state .
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When news show of the computer virus first stop at the ending of December 2019 , doctors in the U.S. commit specimens to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) in Atlanta for testing . For instance , when a man in Snohomish County , Washington , became thefirst person in the country to be diagnose with COVID-19 , doctors used FedEx to transport his sample overnight to the CDC , which swear the diagnosing the next day .
In other February , the CDC sent testing kit to labs across the U.S. , but aglitch in the kitsmade them unuseable . Now , more than a calendar month afterwards , just five country health department — in California , Illinois , Nebraska , Nevada and Tennessee — as well as the CDC , have the power to test for the virus , cognise as SARS - CoV-2 .
There ’s so much backlog now , that getting results from the CDC can take several day , said Dr. William Schaffner , an infective - disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee .
Other U.S. institutions , both public and private , are working to adjust up testing centers . But in rules of order to name SARS - CoV-2 , scientists have to obtain , verify and launch the current CDC test . Or , they can file an diligence for a new testing protocol and get it approved by the Food and Drug Administration . Both processes can be hard , specially when it comes to obtain positive controller materials — in other word , samples of the virus itself so that scientist can compare new sheath to it , Greninger said .
The situation is so dire , that Sen. Brian Schatz , D - Hawaii , said he is asking the CDC if Hawaii can get testing kits from Japan , according to Hawaii Public Radio . ( A Nipponese tourist to Hawaii was later diagnosed with COVID-19 . ) But even this test would have to go through FDA blessing , Greninger say .
High threshold
Only sure people can take the SARS - CoV-2 diagnostic test . The CDC requires that patients with suspected COVID-19 meet a certaincriteria before being screen , including having a fever . But people with mild case of the virus might not have a pyrexia , Schaffner said .
" There are discussions that many of us have had that we would care the testing touchstone to be relaxed more , not made quite so stringent , " Schaffner tell Live Science . " [ But ] I suspect the criteria for examination will open up up once the laboratories become comfortable in doing the trial run and they know they have a regular provision of the reagents . "
These stern protocols may explicate , in part , why as of Feb. 26,just 445 people have been testedfor SARS - CoV-2 in the U.S. , not include travelers who have returned on evacuation flights , such as those from theDiamond Princesscruise ship . In demarcation , as of Feb. 25 , South Korea has test more than 35,000 mass for the virus , The Washington Post reported .
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It ’s impossible to understand the breadth of the virus if the U.S. does n’t test for milder case , which will help doctors determine the ratio of meek to severe contagion , said Dr. Amesh Adalja , an infectious - disease specializer and a elderly scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore .
" If the criteria is only to test people who have severe illness , we ’re going to be missing other cases , " Adalja told Live Science . " And in ordering to do that we involve to have much more wide distributed test . "
The U.S. dropped the testis in stick tests out cursorily and making them widely available , the expert told Live Science . But they expressed promise that the country would move up to the challenge shortly .
" I think we ’re on the way to having examination resources to match the need , but we ’re not quite there yet , " said Schaffner , sum , " this is always the case when you ’re deal with a new infective agentive role . "
to begin with published onLive Science .
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