someone, somewhere, didn't have the authority to fix the problem, and was afraid of taking it to those who did -- or it was ignored. Also interdepartmental (FDA vs CDC) infighting.
China released the info needed to create a test in early January, and by Feb 1 the CDC had created and distributed tests to all state health departments (and some local ones like LA, NYC, Chicago). There were plans to do, as part of the flu surveillance, monitoring of all negative flu tests for possible corona cases.
The CDC later (early Feb) discovered that the distributed tests were bad, and the FDA pulled the emergency approval. To fix the test it would take a replacement reagent which would be available in mid to late March.
To my knowledge they still haven't gotten a replacement reagent to most labs -- its just that they changed to the test so it doesn't require it. This may make the test more subject to errors (false positives), which is why presumed cases are sent to the CDC for confirmation. They did this after such an uproar about no testing being performed, and all of the sudden we have a major outbreak in Seattle.
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