CDC: how its initial devastating testing on COVID devastated the pandemic response and costed 5 weeks with the nation blind to the virus; caused virus to seed across the nation; CDC gives part data

Report: The CDC contaminated its first coronavirus tests, setting US back on testing

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Report: The CDC contaminated its first coronavirus tests, setting US back on testing

This botched testing by the CDC was so catastrophic it harmed the pandemic response early on and many in the agency and across public health argue it set the US response back severely and that the US is still digging out of the hole from this failure. April 2022.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) failed to follow appropriate manufacturing procedures while developing the United States’ coronavirus test, resulting in contamination that delayed making tests available nationwide, according to an investigation by the Washington Post’s David Willman.

News of the mishap comes as states are grappling with how and when to reopen their economies. That can’t be done safely until widespread testing is available, and experts say the US is woefully behind.

The CDC violated its own standards when developing the testing kits in a lab that was also working with synthetic coronavirus material, the Post reported. This led to contamination of one of the components used in the tests, which is believed to have caused false positives in the first batch of tests. The CDC took more than a month to correct the issue, hindering efforts to limit the early spread of the coronavirus in the US.”…