Science

CDC Admits It Screwed Up Nation’s First Coronavirus Tests

FUBAR

“It was just tragic,” says Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

RTS351BW_xoe5no
Tom Brenner/Reuters

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted Saturday that it broke its own protocol when manufacturing the first coronavirus tests, leading to contamination that delayed the federal government’s efforts to control the outbreak, The New York Times reported. The agency sent tests that did not work to public health labs around the country in February. “It was just tragic,” Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told the Times. “All that time when we were sitting there waiting, I really felt like, here we were at one of the most critical junctures in public health history, and the biggest tool in our toolbox was missing.”

Read it at The New York Times

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.