The kits are sent to a LAB, not a state government. No state has more access to these labs than any other state. You could be hospitalized with symptoms across the street from the CDC, but that doesn’t get you tested any faster than someone in Wyoming or Texas.
Yes, we need the ability to test at the hospital level for those hospitals that have the ability. But right now we are barely testing at all. That’s a policy problem, not a lack of capacity.
Only three US states can test for coronavirus, says public lab group
PUBLISHED FRI, FEB 21 20201:04 PM EST
Reuters
KEY POINTS
California, Nebraska and Illinois are the only U.S. states that can currently test for coronavirus, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) told Reuters on Friday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said some of the testing kits sent to U.S. states and at least 30 countries produced “inconclusive” results due to a flawed component.
The CDC planned to send replacement materials to make the kits work.
It can probably be tested by taking a bodily fluid sample and looking at it through an electron microscope. Plenty of color pics of the little bugger on the web. Not everyone has an electron scope though and it’s subject to human error/interpretation. Hence they need test kits for dummies. Why the first batch were defective? Who knows. Made in China? Procured by some RESIST person in fedgov? Incompetence on someone’s part?
Meanwhile Trump shut off travel of people coming here from China early this month and since 77,000+ cases out of 80,000 cases are in China, that seems to have given us time for the test kit glitch.
But this ain’t the flu. All we can do is keep track and prepare ourselves. So glad I moved from Ctrl FL to rural Ozarks.