The number of coronavirus cases in the USA has increased 1000 and public health experts are openly criticizing the role of authorities in it. The health authorities are under this blame for showing lagged behavior for testing coronavirus samples.
Among these patients, at least 28 have lost their lives to coronavirus and more than 10,25 people are currently infected. The daily toll on coronavirus developed and run by Johns Hopkins University shows that this infection rate has almost doubled than a week before.
This rise is a question mark on the health authorities offering diagnostic services for coronavirus suspects, as most of the cases are now shifted from the federal government to state-level laboratories.
Epidemiologists suspect of using flawed test kits that were designed for limited people only. At the time of their development, no one knew that this virus would go worse in such less time.
This delayed diagnosis has contributed a lot to the overall spread of coronavirus in the USA. The same is narrated by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University have shared in their papers published in the “Journal of the American Medical Association” (JAMA).
Mike Pence, the Vice President has given a statement from White House defending the acts and responses of the US government saying “a million tests are in the field.” He also said these efforts would be increased as the government has joined hands with private partners to control this coronavirus infection in the USA.
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More than 8,500 tests were performed only on one day, supporting the recent information and figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
On the other side, South Korea also announced the first coronavirus case on the same day when the United States confirmed its first case. But it has tested approximately 189,000 people for coronavirus during the same period.
The JAMA study authors explain that the only test that health authorities initially used in testing coronavirus suspects in the US was the basic test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
But later on, it also used the diagnostic approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the CDC basic testing kit was showing inconclusive results.
The first coronavirus death was reported on 29th February and it took a month for the US government to lift the ban imposed on state labs to develop their own diagnostic kits as per WHO’s recommendations.
Michelle Mello from Stanford University is a co-author of this JAMA report. She wrote in University’s blog that; “Adopting broader testing criteria and allowing the use of a wider range of tests would have been helpful in identifying the first US cases and containing the spread.”
She further wrote that; “Manufacturing problems like the one that arose with CDC’s test are always a risk, but the fact that CDC put all its eggs in that one basket made the manufacturing snafu highly consequential.”
Initially, CDC was only allowed to test people which were confirmed for viral exposure. For example, a patient from California who was on a ventilator was delayed for five days for the test.
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This raises questions on several procedural flaws and inaccuracies over making control strategy for coronavirus outbreak. White House communicated that the efforts are so close to finding a permanent cure of coronavirus that its vaccine is only a couple of months away.
“The public messaging from Washington about the seriousness of the problem has been neither consistent nor accurate, and I worry it may have led Americans to take fewer steps to prevent community transmission than we should have,” says Michelle.
The authors suggest that health authorities should not delay or deny a person for testing against coronavirus. It would only increase the infected people and prolong the control over this deadly coronavirus infection.
