Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000 From: Vermont, USA Status: offline
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I guess this is my main frustration in our response so far and it doesn't seem to come down to any limitations on data from China, but rather on our own bureaucracy and regulations and the idiocy that those often create, even when lives are at stake. For comparison, one week ago the CDC was able to process 50-100 test per day and three or four states were able to test, no hospitals. At that point, largely due to the narrow testing criteria from the CDC (required travel to China) we had tested less than 500 cases. That's now gone up to about 500 per day at the CDC and hopefully all states can now test to some degree, but still no hospitals as far as I know. As far as I know, that's been partly held up by the (now fixed) problem with the emergency declaration stupidly requiring everyone to wait on the CDC, which was unable to get these kits working again quickly. CDC was planning to start active surveillance back in early February. That was pushed back due to test issues, but restrictions weren't lifted on allowing others to work on their own test. As soon as these hurdles were cleared and limits lifted and testing definitions broadened, we started finding cases where folks were infected more than a week ago with no foreign links and people will unfortunately die because of these unnecessary delays. Meanwhile, South Korea as an example had some testing with six hour turn-around available down to the hospital level as early as February 7th and has been running about 10,000 tests a day all through this last week. They didn't get anything more from China than we did to help get their testing online. My $.02, the horse has left the barn and hopefully there's still time to find it and put it back. Regards, - Erik
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