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MONDAY, April 20, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The first COVID-19 tests in the United States were ineffective due to poor laboratory practices at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.<\/p>\n
The CDC’s own manufacturing standards were violated by two of the agency’s three labs in Atlanta that created the COVID-19 test kits. As a result, the CDC sent ineffective tests to nearly all of the 100 state and local public health labs, according to the FDA, The New York Times<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n
A major problem was that researchers entered and left COVID-19 laboratories without changing their coats, officials said. That resulted in contamination of tests sent to public health labs, making them unusable, The Times<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n
“CDC did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol,” FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Caccomo said in a statement. As a result of the manufacturing problems with the tests, the CDC had to delay the launch of a nationwide COVID-19 detection program for a month, and the United States lost ground in its fight against COVID-19, The Times<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n