On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said the issues associated with faulty coronavirus test kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the early stages of the nation’s outbreak were resolved in early February.
The CDC’s COVID-19 test kits were delayed because of “a glaring scientific breakdown” at its central lab, according to The Washington Post report.
Former CDC officer James Le Duc told the Post, “The error was devastating to the country and really a terrible black mark on the CDC.”
Speaking with NBC’s Meet the Press, Pence said he had seen such reports but he believes the problems of the particular test kits were resolved by early February. He said that those “slow, lab-based tests,” which are conducted by the CDC and public health labs, would “never have been able to meet the testing in this coronavirus epidemic.”
The CDC sent initial coronavirus test kits to public health labs across the states when the outbreak first began in February. Later, the CDC said those kits were problematic and may have delivered inaccurate results.
Because of these issues, doctors had to send samples to public health labs and the CDC in Atlanta, which delayed testing and results for those who were infected.
The Post reported, “The CDC facilities that assembled the initial testing kits violated sound manufacturing practices, resulting in contamination of one of the three test components used in the highly sensitive detection process.”
On Saturday, a spokesperson of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told CNBC, the “CDC did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol. The FDA was not able to determine from the information provided by the CDC whether the test issues were due to a design or manufacturing issue.”
The FDA then issued emergency approval of coronavirus test kits developed by Roche, Lab Corp., and Quest Diagnostics to ramp up testing. Pence said President Trump was right to form this association to meet the demand of tests. He also said the administration is planning to expand testing in the coming weeks and months.
Pence told NBC, “From that time in February, we had done some 20,000 tests total across the country. Now we’ve done more than 4 million, and we believe we’ll have done more than 5 million by the end of this month.”
The vice president was asked whether 5 million test kits would be considered a success by the end of April. He replied, “The administration has laid a strong foundation for testing for phase one.”
