Lab making coronavirus test kits may have been contaminated: report
Americans have rushed to buy one-use masks and prepared for the worst as the coronavirus takes hold in more states around the U.S., But according to Axios, the lab working on creating the test kits for detecting the virus may have been contaminated.
"A top federal scientist sounded the alarm about what he feared was contamination in an Atlanta lab where the government made test kits for the coronavirus, according to sources familiar with the situation in Atlanta," reported Axios on Sunday evening.
President Donald Trump's administration has already ordered an investigation on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab making the kits; sources told the site.
"Upon learning about the test issue from CDC, FDA worked with CDC to determine that problems with certain test components were due to a manufacturing issue," said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn.
The CDC has also refused to allow states to make their own test kits, and it isn't clear why.
One of the greatest barriers in discovering the spread of coronavirus is the U.S. doesn't have enough test kits available. Once South Korea was able to have test kits, the spread of the illness exploded. It's possible that the low numbers in the U.S. have more to do with an inability to test infected people.
According to Canadian Global News, the province of British Columbia has tested more people for coronavirus than the entirety of the United States.
"The FDA says it now has full confidence in the coronavirus diagnostic kit, but a slew of new cases announced over the weekend suggest the virus has spread throughout the country while the U.S. government tested only a narrow subset of the population for it," said Axios.
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