I thought you’d never ask:
- The virus genome
was publicly available in mid-January, and the first tests were developed shortly thereafter. The World Health Organization (WHO)
sent hundreds of thousands of tests to dozens of laboratories around the world by early February. But the administration and CDC decided to rely exclusively on domestically developed tests,
apparently in keeping with past practice. The CDC developed its own test in early February, which was then distributed to labs. But, as became clear roughly a week later, one of the reagents in its kits
proved to be faulty, which meant that most labs were unable to proceed using CDC-provided test kits.
- Nevertheless, for
at least two weeksafter the problem became clear, alternative paths to testing were either neglected or stymied by existing regulations.
- Although the Emergency Use Authorizations required by the declaration of a public health emergency were meant to facilitate rapid testing, it soon
became clear that their required procedures were actually significantly retarding the development of effective testing at scale.
- CDC was reassuring state and local officials that testing capacity was adequate in late February, although it was
reported that fewer than 500 tests had been conducted at that point. (CDC’s own
count, which includes its own tests plus those of U.S. public health labs, puts the total number of tests at the end of February at around 4,000.)
- Perversely, the failure to test at scale kept the publicly recognized number of cases low, which served as a justification for insisting that the existing testing regime was adequate.
- This phase lasted through nearly all of February—a lost month during a critical period.
- A third phase began in late February, when the CDC and FDA demonstrated a clear shift in their sense of urgency. Although testing was finally expanding during this phase, availability was still severely limited, in spite of administration insistence of adequacy.
