WASHINGTON: The number of US cases of the novel coronavirus surged past 1,000 on Tuesday , after public health experts criticised authorities for downplaying the epidemic and lagging behind in testing efforts.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday, academics from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University said the failings had contributed to the virus taking root across the country.Speaking at a White House briefing, Vice President Mike Pence defended the federal government's response and said that"a million tests are in the field." He added that more would be added as the government partnered with private companies.
It was not until Feb 29, the date of the first US death and more than a month after the first confirmed US case, that the Food and Drug Administration lifted a ban on state laboratories developing their own kits based on the WHO's tests."Adopting broader testing criteria and allowing use of a wider range of tests would have been helpful in identifying the first US cases and containing the spread," said Michelle Mello of Stanford, a co-author of the JAMA report.
The CDC was initially only testing people with known exposure, meaning a Californian patient on a ventilator was denied the test for five days, the patient's doctors said. The criteria were changed as a result of this case.
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