WASHINGTON (CN) – The nation’s senior-most expert on infectious diseases told lawmakers Thursday the U.S. is failing at a federal level to administer broadscale testing for the novel coronavirus.
The blunt message was delivered to the House Oversight Committee by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the top members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce.
It was the second time in as many days Fauci spoke plainly to lawmakers about glaring gaps the outbreak has exposed in America’s pandemic response abilities.
“The system is not really geared to what we need right now and what you’re asking for,” Fauci said, fielding questions from Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., on when the U.S. would see tests distributed en masse or if that is possible. “The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it – we’re not set up for that. That is a failing. It’s a failing. Let’s admit that.”
On Thursday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said only 75,000 tests have so far been issued from the CDC to public health labs and clinicians around the U.S.
But he underscored that laboratories like Quest Diagnostic, LabCorp and others are hurrying to develop test kits and adopt appropriate CDC guidelines allowing them to potentially double production capacity.
The American Enterprise Institute is tracking test kit development and reported Thursday that with more diagnostic labs now making up for lost time, the estimated rate of daily testing capacity in America sits at 20,695 people per day. That figure is up from just 24 hours earlier when estimated testing capacity was closer to 16,500 people per day.
The delay by the CDC is due in part to the “complexity of getting the tests,” Redfield told lawmakers.
It’s not just a matter of having access to reagents, or the chemicals used to extract and stabilize ribonucleic acid needed for sampling, he said. It’s also about having other vital equipment functional and readily available as the outbreak ramps up.
This week, the American Society for Microbiology warned reagent shortages were likely and noted demand for kits also put extraordinary pressure on related supplies.
People with serious underlying medical conditions are given top priority for most tests. According to the CDC, surveillance testing, which allows health officials to test in communities at random in order to develop a sense for the outbreak’s spread, is just barely being rolled out in under a dozen locations in the U.S.
While the CDC has multiple tools at its disposal for surveillance testing of other diseases, testing for the coronavirus known as COVID-19 isn’t ready on a widespread scale. Redfield did not say what the timeline might be.
States like Hawaii and Colorado have begun taking matters into their own hands. The Mile High State opened its first drive-through testing site just outside the Colorado Department of Public Health on Wednesday. The department ended up testing 160 people in a single day, which, according to the Colorado Sun, was nearly double the number of tests the state lab can do in 24 hours.
