The Trump administration is resolving issues concerning testing kits for the novel coronavirus after public health laboratories reported they were not able to use them because they were defective, Vice President Mike Pence said Monday.
"We believe we are in the process of resolving the issues about testing kits," Pence, who is coordinating the government's virus efforts, told Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo. "In fact, as the director of the FDA announced yesterday, we have now approved a new arrangement so that states can conduct these tests on their own."
The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating problems with a coronavirus test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and permitted by the Food and Drug Administration for national distribution, reports Politico. Last month, just three of the more than 100 public health labs nationwide said they were able to use the tests.
Contamination in a lab where a test component was being made may have been the issue, reports Axios, with an HHS official confirming to Politico that the contamination issue has been resolved.
"As we speak, literally more than 15,000 kits are going out to the relevant areas and we'll soon be sending another 50,000 that are going to be made commercially available out to states," Pence said. "I was actually told several of the new cases this past weekend were a result of people coming in and the test was being properly administered."
He added that there will be "many more cases" of the novel coronavirus in the United States, and he called the weekend death of a Washington state man "heartbreaking."
The government will also be helping places such as regions of South Korea and Italy, which are under travel advisories from President Donald Trump, said Pence.
"When you have a virus spreading like this, what the experts have said in my briefings, again and again, is the most important thing is that people there don't travel unnecessarily," said Pence. "The president's decision is reflective of that warning."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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