When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assured President Trump that the risk of a coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the U.S. was very low, only about 500 persons had been tested.
This was because the CDC controlled all testing and restricted it at first to persons with a known contact who had been in China, later liberalized to persons who were severely ill.
In addition, CDC declined to use the test approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), insisting on its own test, which proved to be defective. Many laboratories are capable of developing a protocol to do tests but fear FDA/CDC enforcement actions and loss of their laboratory license.
Meanwhile, other nations are testing extensively. South Korea has 500 test sites, which have screened 100,000 people. The number of confirmed cases surged from 31 to more than 4,200 in two weeks. Some sites offer drive-through testing; one reportedly tested 384 people in one day.
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