Decisions and blunders made months ago have caused testing disparities worldwide. The science, it turns out, was the easy part.
By contrast, anxious citizens in the United States and many parts of Western Europe have endured byzantine delays, or have been denied testing altogether. As the coronavirus pandemic shuts down world capitals and paralyzes entire economies, political leaders are rushing to make testing more widely available.
But experts say that the decisive moment, when aggressive testing might have allowed officials to stay ahead of the disease, passed more than a month ago. It was not a question of science. Researchers say a viral test is relatively easy to develop. Rather, scientists say, the chasm between the testing haves and have-nots politics, public health strategies and, in some cases, blunders.
In that same period, Singapore was setting up health screenings at airports, issuing work-from-home guidelines and releasing plans to monitor travelers returning from abroad. Independent labs in Korea were rushing their tests out the door.
“They were ready , and they just churned out the kits, ”said Dr. Jerome Kim, of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul. today, the epicenter of the outbreak is Europe and experts say the wave is only starting to hit the United States. Faced with a growing number of cases and limited test kits, many countries have tightened restrictions on who gets tested. In Germany, where the first approved test was developed, only doctors can prescribe one. In France and Belgium, only severely sick patients get tested. The United States and Britain favored a centralized approach. Britain initially assigned a single lab in north London to perform the tests but, a month later, began allowing other labs to do the same. The CDC had to reverse course, too. After its homegrown test proved faulty , it cost the country valuable time. The Trump administration then had to change tactics , urging outside labs and manufacturers to help make a million tests available. Testing can be as much a political issue as a scientific one. Italy, the site of the biggest outbreak outside China, is a prime example. At first, regional authorities in the north tested widely and tried to trace contacts with sick people. But the national government in Rome objected, saying there was no need to test people who did not exhibit symptoms. “Someone said we’re testing too many people and this is why we have such a huge number. That is not true, ”Giovanni Rezza, director of the department of infectious diseases at the Italian National Institute of Health. But raw numbers ignore the effect of timing. South Korea deployed its tests early and alongside other approaches, including some that European populations might resist. A government app monitored people to ensure they remained quarantined. Police officers used surveillance camera footage, phone data and credit card records to recreate the movements of new patients and identify potential contacts. Kim Gang-lip, a South Korean vice health minister, said the contagiousness of the disease and its rapid spread demanded a new approach. “Such characteristics of the virus render the traditional response, which emphasizes lockdown and isolation, ineffective,” he said. A New Testing Reality Lockdown and isolation are a reality today for tens of millions of people. Italy is at a standstill. Europe has all but shut its borders. President Emmanuel Macron of France told people to stay at home for 18 days and ordered the army to transport the sick to hospitals. Mr. Trump recommended against all but the smallest gatherings. ‘This Could Be a Problem’
from the beginning, some countries showed greater urgency than others and were more nimble in their response.
fast-track approval for a company coronavirus test and began shipping kits. A second company was approved a week later. Two more soon followed. Australian labs designed a generic test in early January, then refined it after receiving the genome. “We were anticipating early on that we could see cases, that this could be a problem,” said Dr. Jen Kok, a government virologist in New South Wales, Australia, a region where more than 75, 04 People have been tested so far.
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