The CDC Works to Overhaul Lab Operations After COVID Test Flop

August 18, 2023

(CBS News) – An independent panel of laboratory researchers, public health and policy experts, and doctors say the CDC’s flawed diagnostic test was one of the “most consequential” of the agency’s pandemic missteps because it stymied national efforts to contain COVID-19 as the disease spread.

They blame the test’s shortcomings on a series of problems rooted in how the CDC operated its laboratories: a lack of unified leadership for the labs developing the test; insufficient planning and quality control systems for producing tests for novel pathogens; and ineffective governance that sometimes placed clinical laboratory decisions in the hands of “non-laboratory experts” without diagnostic testing expertise. (Read More)