CDC Admits It Screwed Up Nation’s First Coronavirus Tests

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.”