Washington (AFP)
Diagnostic tests for the new Covid-19 coronavirus developed and made available by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for other countries are not working well, an official said on Wednesday.
The CDC developed a diagnostic kit for the virus and began on February 5 to send them to certified laboratories in the United States, in each of the 50 states, in order to speed up local detection of cases.
But American laboratories have found, during the standard test verification procedure, that it can produce inconclusive results, neither positive nor negative.
"Some states have obtained inconclusive laboratory results," said Nancy Messonnier, director of respiratory diseases at the CDC.
"We think that one of the three reagents is not working uniformly," she said. "This is why we are in the process of remanufacturing this reagent".
The US government said Tuesday that 36 countries have ordered a kit, with each kit capable of testing 700 to 800 samples. After saying that the kits had started shipping to international laboratories, the CDC told AFP on Wednesday that the shipments had not yet actually taken place because of the problem reported in the United States.
For now, as since the beginning of the epidemic, all American tests continue to be carried out in Atlanta, at the headquarters of the CDC.
To date, the United States has 13 confirmed cases of Covid-2019.
© 2020 AFP