Flawed tests, red tape and resistance to using the millions of tests produced by the WHO
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/16/cdc-who-coronavirus-tests/
By Peter Whoriskey and Neena Satija
March 16, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. EDT
When Olfert Landt heard about the novel coronavirus, he got busy.
Founder of a small Berlin-based company, the ponytailed 54-year-old first raced to help German researchers come up with a diagnostic test and then spurred his company to produce and ship more than 1.4 million tests by the end of February for the World Health Organization.
My wife and I have been working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, ever since, Landt said by phone about 1 a.m. Friday, Berlin time. Our days are full.
By contrast, over the same critical period, U.S. efforts to distribute tests ground nearly to a halt, and the countrys inability to produce them left public health officials with limited means to determine where and how fast the virus was spreading. From mid-January until Feb. 28, fewer than 4,000 tests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used out of more 160,000 produced.
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This is going to cost hundreds of thousands of lives...