The Centers for Disease Control’s stunning failure to provide the coronavirus testing kits needed to control the spread of the outbreak is a national outrage.
The incompetence threatens Americans’ health and the nation’s economy. It’s imperative that the CDC make mass production of test kits its top priority. The CDC must also give clear direction on how we can best deal with this national emergency.
Bay Area officials, including San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, have been begging for additional testing kits for weeks. Their fear is that the delays may result in it being too late to contain the looming health disaster.
South Korea is testing 20,000 people every day, thanks to a biotech firm that anticipated the threat in January. South Korea is providing free tests for anyone a doctor deems necessary at more than 100 facilities across the nation. The result is that South Korea is now seeing more recoveries than new cases.
Contrast that with the state of California, which has only 10 million fewer people than South Korea. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that the state has been provided with 8,227 testing kits from the CDC. But some of those kits did not contain all the chemicals needed to administer them to Californians — a glaring failure given that it’s been nearly two months since the coronavirus outbreak began in China.
Newsom compared it to “going to the store and purchasing a printer, but forgetting to purchase the ink. You need multiple components.”
All told, as of Friday, California had conducted a total of only 1,573 tests at its 18 state test labs.
The problem stems from the CDC’s botched first effort to mass produce test kits, followed by delays in sending promised replacement kits for several weeks.
“The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the CDC,” Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, told the New York Times. “This is not a difficult problem to solve in the world of viruses.”
Testing is crucial to slowing the spread of the disease because it allows those who are infected to be quarantined. Health officials can then trace who they may have been in contact with and test and possibly quarantine those people.
It’s essential that Congress investigate what went wrong and take steps to prevent it from happening during the next inevitable infectious disease threat. But that’s for another day. The focus now must be on taking steps to minimize further spread of coronavirus and its impact on people and the economy.
California and other states are turning to major hospitals and private labs for additional help. It’s possible that more testing sites could be up and running this week. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on Friday could also eliminate red tape and speed the testing process.
Once upon a time, the United States was the global leader in fighting infectious diseases and serving as the provider for testing kits to the world. Those days are long gone. The CDC must act to make up for its incompetence and take whatever steps necessary to protect Americans against current and future outbreaks.