# What is the holdup with test kits in the USA? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [March 11, 2020, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242 "2020-03-11T02:26:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![This\_Just\_In\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@This\_Just\_In\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/This_Just_In_2)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/1 "2020-03-11T02:26:38Z")
What exactly is the holdup with test kits in the USA? 1. Are they difficult to manufacture? Long lead time? Expensive? It seems like you don’t hear these stories coming out of other countries where testing is ramped up quickly in the countries worst affected. I understand the US CDC somehow messed up making them the first time - but that was identified seemingly weeks ago now. 2. Is there truly a concerted effort by the US Federal government to restrict the allocation and/or usage of test kits? 3. Is the issue blown out of proportion by the media, doctors etc. with too much anxiety about the need for testing? 4. Is it hit with too much red tape somehow due to contractual issues, insurance company issues, government regulations etc? There are so many labs and universities with some of the worlds brightest minds in the US - as this crisis is unfolding how come this issue can’t be resolved in like 24-48 hours? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/2 "2020-03-11T03:05:08Z")
Politics. ---
**Author:** ![dougrb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dougrb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougrb)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/3 "2020-03-11T03:26:48Z")
Incompetence ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/4 "2020-03-11T03:37:41Z")
Incompetent politicians ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/5 "2020-03-11T04:55:37Z")
Every year, Trump’s budget proposal has included cuts to the CDC. This year, even with the Coronavirus spreading, he proposed cutting 1/6th of their budget. That is a relevant fact, for GQ. I suppose more detailed discussions would get this thread into Great Debate territory. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/6 "2020-03-11T05:56:12Z")
Tests have to be developed first. After that they had to be validated by the FDA–a lengthy process. However: > [@](#): > > On Feb. 29, the Food and Drug Administration issued a new policy to expedite the process for some laboratories to develop new diagnostic tests for SARS-CoV2, the virus that is causing the current outbreak of COVID-19. > > Highly qualified laboratories, including both those run by public agencies and private labs, are now authorized to begin using their own validated test for the virus as long as they submit an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the Food and Drug Administration within 15 days of notifying the agency of validation. > **[CDC, FDA Move to Expand and Expedite Coronavirus Testing](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/926162)** > > The White House Coronavirus Task Force appeared at a press briefing March 2 to provide updates about testing strategies and public health coordination to address the current outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/7 "2020-03-11T07:46:48Z")
Britain has carried out about three times as many tests as America, so I don’t think difficulty in developing a test is the reason. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/8 "2020-03-11T08:04:08Z")
Trump announced recently that " the number (of Coronavirus cases in the US) was going down" and “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero”. 😕 A Trump supporter has stated that Coronavirus is ‘fake news’ spread by Democrats. :smack: So why do you need test kits? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/9 "2020-03-11T11:37:59Z")
On the BBC this morning: > [@](#): > > US infections pass 1,000 as deaths rise to 31 > As the US east coast wakes up, here’s a quick recap on the situation in the country. > > The number of people infected has passed 1,000 with new cases reported on both sides of the country, rather than just the west coast where the earliest outbreak took place. > > Dozens of cases have been linked to a conference held at a hotel in Boston in February. Other clusters have emerged nursing homes around Seattle in Washington state. > > In one of the most drastic moves so far, gatherings of more than 250 people have been banned in the Seattle area. > > Nationally, there have been five more deaths, taking the total to 31, US media reported. Of the latest fatalities, two were in Washington state and there was one each in New Jersey, South Dakota and California. > > Nineteen states have declared emergencies, the Washington Post reported. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/10 "2020-03-11T11:45:23Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Britain has carried out about three times as many tests as America, so I don’t think difficulty in developing a test is the reason. According to the news this morning, the WHO developed a Coronavirus test a while ago; this is the test that’s in heavy use in other countries (e.g. South Korea, where they are reportedly using it to test 10,000 people _per day_, compared to a cumulative total of just a few thousand in the US). The US for some reason is regarding the WHO test as “research grade” rather than “diagnostic grade,” which apparently means they (the CDC) don’t trust it and aren’t willing to use it and would rather wait for production of their own test. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/11 "2020-03-11T12:28:03Z")
[The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html) has a very detailed article about how the US bungled testing. In short: Government bureaucracies have so little flexibility that their response to a rogue positive Coronavirus test was “You shouldn’t have done that without the right authorization”. > [@](#): > > On the other side of the country in Seattle, Dr. Chu and her flu study colleagues, unwilling to wait any longer, decided to begin running samples. > > A technician in the laboratory of Dr. Lea Starita who was testing samples soon got a hit. > > “I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” Dr. Starita said. “I just took off running” to the office of the study’s program managers. “We got one,” she told them. “What do we do?” > > […] > > Later that day, the investigators and Seattle health officials gathered with representatives of the C.D.C. and the F.D.A. to discuss what happened. The message from the federal government was blunt. “What they said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu,” Dr. Lindquist remembered. “Stop testing.” > [@](#): > > The Association of Public Health Laboratories made what it called an “extraordinary and rare request” of Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the F.D.A., asking him to use his discretion to allow state and local public health laboratories to create their own tests for the virus. > > “We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of C.D.C. for the vast majority of our member laboratories,” Scott Becker, the chief executive of the association, wrote in a letter to Dr. Hahn. > > Dr. Hahn responded two days later, saying in a letter that “false diagnostic test results can lead to significant adverse public health consequences” and that the laboratories were welcome to submit their own tests for emergency authorization. > > […] > > Dr. Alex Greninger, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, said he became exasperated in mid-February as he communicated with the F.D.A. over getting his application ready to begin testing. “This virus is faster than the F.D.A.,” he said, adding that at one point the agency required him to submit materials through the mail in addition to over email. This is one of the areas where I feel like it’s mostly not Trump’s fault, the clear faults in the system are happening many layers lower than he has his attention on. Instead, what it seems like is that everyone is so concerned with liability that every box has to be crossed, every paper trail has to be documented so that in case shit hits the fan, it doesn’t fall on them and who cares if it takes an extra day or two or month if that happens? Nobody has the liberty or authority to say damn the consequences, this is an emergency, we can sort all of this out later. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/12 "2020-03-11T13:35:24Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html) has a very detailed article about how the US bungled testing. In short: Government bureaucracies have so little flexibility that their response to a rogue positive Coronavirus test was “You shouldn’t have done that without the right authorization”. > > This is one of the areas where I feel like it’s mostly not Trump’s fault, the clear faults in the system are happening many layers lower than he has his attention on. Instead, what it seems like is that everyone is so concerned with liability that every box has to be crossed, every paper trail has to be documented so that in case shit hits the fan, it doesn’t fall on them and who cares if it takes an extra day or two or month if that happens? Nobody has the liberty or authority to say damn the consequences, this is an emergency, we can sort all of this out later. It’s his fault to put a bunch of yes men, know nothing ass kissers in charge. It’s also his fault to cut and continue to cut the funds of agencies that would handle this. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/13 "2020-03-11T13:45:18Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Nobody has the liberty or authority to say damn the consequences, this is an emergency, we can sort all of this out later. That’s your answer? To allow people up and down the chain autonomy to make decisions and essentially create policy on their own? That’s a terrible idea. If you have an emergency, you can relax some bureaucratic requirements but clear goals and boundaries need to be set from the top level and transmitted down so that it’s not the Wild West with individuals suddenly approving anything willy-nilly with no oversight. And putting the right people in charge and defining those priorities is totally on the West Wing. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/14 "2020-03-11T13:46:57Z")
Furthermore, even if it really is the remnants of the deep state, it’s not helping him to call this a media hoax. Just like if, in theory, there was no coordinated pro-trump Russian interference in the election, when he openly asks them to interfere and they do so, don’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion. If you don’t want people to think you are interfering in testing, don’t call it fake news. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/15 "2020-03-11T15:37:34Z")
> [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](#): > > Every year, Trump’s budget proposal has included cuts to the CDC. This year, even with the Coronavirus spreading, he proposed cutting 1/6th of their budget. > > That is a relevant fact, for GQ. > I suppose more detailed discussions would get this thread into Great Debate territory. This is true, but largely irrelevent, since the President doesn’t set the budget. Every year Obama did a budget Congress basically ignored it, and AFAIK, no one has seriously looked at Trump’s budget either. The fact is that the CDC’s budget went up for the last few years, despite whatever Trump did or didn’t try and do. Here is the [factcheck](https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coronavirus-claims/) for anyone interested (for anyone not, budget went up from 2016 to 2018, then dropped a bit in 2019, but back up in 2020). Thing is, there is plenty of real stuff to hate on Trump for…this isn’t one of them, especially since no one really cares what the President puts in their budget wrt actual implementation of policy. The budget is Congress’s job. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/16 "2020-03-11T15:53:34Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Nobody has the liberty or authority to say damn the consequences, this is an emergency, we can sort all of this out later. One person does, but you’ve decided it isn’t his fault. If it’s the FDA being bureaucratically inflexible, that’s where Trump needs to instruct them to get out of the way. If the CDC is the roadblock here, standing in the way of the WHO test because it isn’t good enough… they better damn well be right. I’d say that Trump should tell them to get out of the way, too, but neither of us knows more about how these things work than the CDC. But, they better be right. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/17 "2020-03-11T16:08:09Z")
Can someone explain about the tests/test kits? How are they administered? How long do they take? What’s involved in manufacturing, distributing, and administering them? How accurate are they? (For a General Questions thread, the ratio of useful information to opinions and pontificating so far seems rather low.) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/18 "2020-03-11T16:11:59Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Can someone explain about the tests/test kits? How are they administered? How long do they take? What’s involved in manufacturing, distributing, and administering them? How accurate are they? > (For a General Questions thread, the ratio of useful information to opinions and pontificating so far seems rather low.) The ones I’ve seen distributed here are throat swabs. They are administered the same way other throat swabs get administered, i.e. a swab down the throat to collect a sample, then it’s put in a plastic tube thingy (you get gloves with the kit as well). I think it’s taking a few days to a week now to get results, but initially it was bottle necked as all samples were being sent to the CDC for testing. I’m not sure who is manufacturing them…I actually didn’t look that closely. There were, again, initial problems with the first kits that, from what we were told, had to do with a bottle neck in chemicals we usually get from China, but supposedly the new kits are doing the job and pretty accurate. Sorry, I didn’t think to ask about the error bars for how accurate they are. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/19 "2020-03-11T16:13:05Z")
There was a pandemic group that was part of the national security staff, and the Trump administration let go the head of the group and disbanded it. There’s your leadership that could have made decisions to cut through the red tape and make sound policy decisions. The CDC decided at the beginning not to use the WHO test, and instead to develop their own test for multiple coronaviruses. They wanted to have a test that would work in future outbreaks of novel coronaviruses. That test was flawed. They have subsequently started to open things up to other labs and universities, but there is lag time and still red tape. Also, the existing test takes hours to run. The capacity to test now may be limited by the number of qualified personnel at labs authorized to run the tests. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242/20 "2020-03-11T16:24:38Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Politics. > [@dougrb](#): > > Incompetence > [@snfaulkner](#): > > Incompetent politicians **Moderator Note** Did you somehow not notice you were in General Questions, or did you deliberately decide to violate the rules? Whatever the causes, driveby one or two word political jabs are not helpful in this forum, especially as first responses. No warning issued, but in this forum you need to provide facts to back up your assertions. Colibri General Questions Moderator [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-holdup-with-test-kits-in-the-usa/849242.md?page=2)