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U.S. Plans ‘Radical Expansion’ of Coronavirus Testing
The New York Times via MSN ^ | March 1st, 2020 | Knvul Sheikh

Posted on 03/01/2020 9:24:52 PM PST by Mariner

After weeks of stalled testing for the coronavirus, the United States now has enough diagnostic kits to test 75,000 people, with more on the way, Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, said on Sunday. a person in a blue shirt: A researcher at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey works in a lab that is developing testing for the coronavirus.

The Trump administration has faced widespread criticism for a slow and scattered delivery of testing materials to states, where only 12 labs are capable of diagnosing the virus.

Mr. Azar’s announcement, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” came a day after the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was giving laboratories and hospitals across the country the go-ahead to conduct tests that had been severely limited to those analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That decision should improve the pace of detecting coronavirus infections and make it possible to more rapidly spot patterns of suspected or confirmed cases. That could be most immediately valuable on the West Coast, where several new cases of unknown origin were reported in recent days.

“We’re not going to find what we’re not looking for, so lifting the restrictions on diagnostic testing will put a lot of minds at ease,” said Haley Holmer, an epidemiologist who happens to have a child at an elementary school in Lake Oswego, Ore., that is closed because a school employee was found to have been infected by the coronavirus.

Mr. Azar said on Sunday that the diagnostic kits, which will distributed within two weeks, represented “a radical expansion even beyond that of the testing that’s available.”

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 4thestate5thcolumn; communityspread; coronavirus; covid19; fakenews; nytimes; nyts; propaganda; sarscov2
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Criminal negligence by the US CDC.

Test kits still two weeks out.

But permission granted to states to procure their own kits for "presumptive cases".

1 posted on 03/01/2020 9:24:52 PM PST by Mariner
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To: Mariner

Yeah - more propaganda.


2 posted on 03/01/2020 9:28:38 PM PST by Skywise
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To: Mariner

Hopefully everyone understands that actual testing means more cases... but those cases already existed. Market needs to stabilize and not freak out when those numbers come out. May labs are working on a vaccine and supportive treatments. Summer is coming. As for supply chains, yeah, that’s going to hurt but will be good for us in the long term. We never should have been so dependent on China (or any country) for essential products.


3 posted on 03/01/2020 9:55:55 PM PST by StolarStorm
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To: Mariner

Earlier articles said that there was a problem with the earlier test kits, and they just got the bugs worked out this past week. It also didn’t help that China would not give the US samples of the virus, so the CDC was delayed in designing and proofing the kits.

I suppose they could have gone ahead and mass-produced and vigorously distributed the flawed kits. I’d prefer they not.

“The rollout of a CDC-designed test kit to state and local labs has become a fiasco because it contained a faulty reagent.”

“The situation may soon improve. State labs and commercial diagnostic developers hope to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their own tests, and FDA and CDC on Wednesday agreed on a workaround for the faulty CDC kit—which has a problem that is not essential to its proper functioning—so that it can now be used by at least some of the state labs that have it.”


4 posted on 03/01/2020 9:56:34 PM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Mariner

Double-speak and means at some point we’ll know just how much ‘out the barn door’ the whole thing is. Sad that they play this game, announcing 75,000 but then in the small print say they are weeks away.


5 posted on 03/01/2020 9:57:58 PM PST by Reno89519 (No Amnesty! No Catch-and-Release! Just Say No to All Illegal Aliens! Arrest & Deport!)
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To: Mariner

UN and China Military games weeks before virus outbreak https://youtu.be/WE8m309gKVE


6 posted on 03/01/2020 10:01:43 PM PST by DivineMomentsOfTruth ("There is but one straight course, ad that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." -GW)
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To: StolarStorm

The analogy is business accounting.

A business could be bleeding cash for months (and getting bank loans to keep the cash flow going), but it is only when the accountants close out the year, and the results publicized, that everyone realizes the company is toast.

By the time you measure this type of data, the measurements themselves are irrelevant. The report is just announcing the obvious.


7 posted on 03/01/2020 10:03:44 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: Reno89519
out the barn door

Welcome to Rhode Island:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/01/metro/health-department-reports-first-case-coronavirus-rhode-island/
8 posted on 03/01/2020 10:06:32 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: cgbg

True, but at least testing will help with targeting supportive care.


9 posted on 03/01/2020 10:10:57 PM PST by StolarStorm
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To: StolarStorm

The targeting will be playing catch-up...

The actual highest-spread areas will not have shown themselves yet, so the resources will be moved to places where the disease has already spread (and actual new patients will be on the decline).


10 posted on 03/01/2020 10:15:41 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: cgbg

Why do you imagine cases will be declining?


11 posted on 03/01/2020 10:18:57 PM PST by cba123 ( Toi la nguoi My. Toi bay gio o Viet Nam.)
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To: cba123

I am anticipating at least some quarantine measures (closing of schools, businesses etc) in local areas that would prevent spread of the disease in that area.


12 posted on 03/01/2020 10:25:15 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: Reno89519

We are out the barn door over the hill and down the lane. We have community spread. This is. is endemic in the community and likely has been here for months. bathers is no stopping it now it will run its course. I hope and pray it’s a relatively benign one. I’m starting to wonder if our severe flu season this year has not at least partly been due to the corona
virus


13 posted on 03/01/2020 10:47:28 PM PST by Mom MD
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To: Mom MD

ugh. should say there’s no stopping it now. big fingers on little keyboard late at night make interesting posts


14 posted on 03/01/2020 10:49:06 PM PST by Mom MD
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To: cgbg

I think now, with proper testing, we will be fine.

There will be a definite spike, but now we have accurate, and widely available testing, I think now we will control this,


15 posted on 03/01/2020 10:51:39 PM PST by cba123 ( Toi la nguoi My. Toi bay gio o Viet Nam.)
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To: Mom MD

Everything is community spread. It’s just now it’s in our communities. I think it’s probably in a lot more people than we know. On the other hand I think that’s because most people who get it can’t even tell they have it I just got a call and then they get better so nobody knows we only learn about it when it hit somebody who reacts badly to it. If that’s true it means it could spread more than we want but it also means that it’s actual mortality rate is much lower than we’re hearing


16 posted on 03/01/2020 11:12:42 PM PST by CharlesWayneCT
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To: Mom MD
I think it has already been here and a large amount of people have already had it and we don't know it. If tests were available back in early January, I think we would have discovered it has already made its way across the US and has already micro evolved.

The "flu" or "cold" that hit in January (and December in Canada) had some very different features in a more intense manner. It was familiar but then it wasn't. Very respiratory dominant. The biggest thing I noticed was when myself and kids recently had it and it went from one to the other over a two or three week period.

It was obvious to me it was the same virus but was attacking secondarily at anyone's weak points. For instance, Most symptoms were the same among family but child with various previous allergies had a more intense experience unlike other flus and described it as "Feels like I can't breath" and "Ears, "completely stuffed". Not what I usually hear for symptoms nor at that intensity, but it was only severe for about 48 hours, otherwise more similar to a cold, however, second child hit with secondary bacterial (strep) infection riding off the virus.

After experiencing that, I am not even afraid of "corona virus"... because I think we already had it.

Something just does not ring right about this whole thing and it is obviously being politicized. It's the new russia russia russia. No question.

17 posted on 03/01/2020 11:21:43 PM PST by Ymani Cricket (Pressure makes diamonds - General Patton)
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To: CharlesWayneCT

I would guess that is the case. I suspect it will turn out to be similar to influenza


18 posted on 03/02/2020 1:02:19 AM PST by Mom MD
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To: Mariner

CLIA 88 makes lab testing almost impossible, by overregulation. Also, as i have mentioned on other threads.. the largest agency that accredits testing personnel have had only dem keynote speakers. Like H Clinton understands lab testing.


19 posted on 03/02/2020 1:55:59 AM PST by momincombatboots (Ephesians 6... who you are really at war with)
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To: Mariner

Re: Criminal negligence by the CDC

Do you also favor universal testing for influenza?

Way more deaths than Corona Virus.


20 posted on 03/02/2020 1:59:00 AM PST by zeestephen
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