-One issue has dominated so much of what Americans have thought,
said, and read for the last two weeks.
-We've not received a single test kit.
-And we were not able to get them a test.
-They actually said, um,
"We don't do coronavirus testing here."
-This is causing a lot of distress in our county.
-The supply chains are stressed.
Human beings are stressed.
-And I think that that was really frustrating
and frightening for everybody.
-Testing is a crucial part of slowing the spread
of any viral outbreak,
so why were coronavirus tests so hard to come by for so long?
Let's go back to the beginning of the pandemic.
Doctors in Wuhan, China, noticed cases of pneumonia
from an unknown cause in early December.
-In Wuhan, some medical institutions have
received successive cases of patients
with a pneumonia of unknown origin.
All medical institutions have been advised to immediately
track their statistics and treatment situation
and report them to the authorities.
-They saw evidence of it spreading between people.
The Chinese authorities didn't inform
the World Health Organization
of the mysterious virus until the end of December.
Researchers worked quickly to try to understand it.
-Ask if they can give us the genetic sequencing
of the new, of the novel coronavirus.
-Once the virus' genetic sequence was publicly available,
labs around the world rushed to design a test.
-In the US, as we typically do, the CDC tried to develop
their own test, and that's --
You know, that in and of itself didn't have to be a problem.
-The CDC weren't the only ones in the US
attempting to develop a test.
Researchers like Alex and Keith
from the University of Washington virology lab
were also working on their own test.
-As we're working through developing this test, right,
that we started back in January, it's starting to work,
and we're testing it on artificial materials.
-The first case of China's new and deadly coronavirus
has been reported here in the US.
-On January 20th, samples were confirmed by the CDC in Atlanta
that, in fact, he carried the novel coronavirus.
-Days later, President Trump
first commented on the situation.
-Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?
-No, not at all.
And we have it totally under control.
It's one person coming in from China,
and we have it under control.
It's gonna be just fine.
-Per CDC guidelines,
only certain people qualified for tests,
including those who had been to Wuhan, China,
or who had come into contact with someone
who tested positive.
-It seemed to me like it was this weird catch-22
where you could only get a test if you had been in contact
with somebody who tested positive,
but since they weren't doing tests,
you know, there was no way
that people could actually get tested.
-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar
declared a public-health emergency,
and the administration announced it would bar some foreigners
who had recently visited China from entering the country.
But, generally, officials continued to downplay
the threat of the virus.
-I want to stress,
the risk of infection for Americans remains low.
And with these and our previous actions,
we're working to keep the risk low.
-The Food and Drug Administration
implemented strict rules on labs
developing tests to ensure that bad tests were not distributed.
Initially, the FDA only gave permission for some state
and public-health labs to test and for the CDC
to make and distribute tests.
Days later, CDC shipped 90 test kits to those qualified labs.
-The CDC's test kits are now available for order
from the International Reagent Resource
for qualified laboratories.
-The catch-22,
which was intended to keep test quality high,
is that this strategy made it difficult for hospital,
private, and university labs.
Remember Keith and Alex from the University of Washington?
-And, so, the test looks like it's working great.
-They finished developing their test,
but they couldn't use it.
They would need FDA approval to do so,
and that required having a sample of live virus,
which they couldn't get.
-Alex starts these conversations with the FDA,
and the feedback was,
"Well, you can't use the test until you test it on virus,"
which, of course -- think about it --
we don't have, right?
So, okay, where can we get the virus?
"Well, you're not allowed to have the virus
because it's dangerous."
And, okay, then we're asking, "What can we do?"
-That's when the exact thing
that public-health officials feared happened.
There were problems with CDC's test.
-A manufacturing problem with a test can always happen.
It's always a risk.
What made it so consequential in this case
is that we put all our eggs in this one basket,
and that basket was really important, and it broke.
We had trouble fixing it.
-Now it's mid-February,
and it's clear that the virus is spreading around the world.
South Korea has tested thousands of people.
The US has tested hundreds.
And that's a huge problem.
But Trump gave no indication
that he saw a storm on the horizon.
-But we're in great shape in our country.
We have eleven, and the eleven are getting better.
-Even after the CDC knew the test didn't work,
the FDA didn't loosen regulations
on who else could make tests
and how those tests would be made.
-You can imagine how frustrating
this was for us through February,
when we really knew we had something to contribute
and we were having a really hard time
just getting the right approvals and being allowed to do this.
-During the delay in testing capabilities, the administration
and the CDC assured the public that progress was being made.
-We're deploying the full force of the US government
to protect the health and safety of the American people,
and, you know, one of the things that we did --
The CDC, within a week of getting the genetic sequencing,
developed a test.
-Local officials started to wonder where the tests were.
-We were first contacted by the New Jersey Department of Health.
They indicated to us that the federal government
would be supplying test kits for the state of New Jersey
and that they would be distributed to the counties
through their department of health.
None of those promises from the Trump administration came true.
-The number of confirmed cases increased,
and public panic grew, but doctors
were still restricted in who they could test.
-We heard that epidemiologists were estimating
that several hundred patients had been infected through
community transmission in Washington,
and at that time, we were still using,
you know, the very restricted CDC guidelines
in deciding who was gonna get tested.
I think, you know, for physicians
all over the world, it feels like we see --
We're, like, at the beginning of a horror movie,
and we're trying to tell people what's coming.
-Even as doctors became more frustrated,
it was near impossible
to tell what was happening from official statements.
Some senior officials attempted to reassure
uneasy stock markets and the public.
-Secretary, I'm out of time,
but I'm told that the diagnostic doesn't work.
-That's incorrect. It is simply, flatly incorrect.
-We have contained this. We have contained this.
I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.
-You may ask about the coronavirus, which is, um,
you know, very well under control in our country.
-But others had a more
grim assessment of what was happening.
-Now it's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore,
but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen.
-Facing mounting challenges,
the FDA loosened its restrictions on February 29th,
making it easier for highly specialized labs
to develop their own tests.
-So, you know, we kind of worked through all this,
got a pathway that would allow us to have our test
actually be approved,
but before that RNA ever actually made it to the lab,
the virus made it to Seattle.
-By the beginning of March, there were more tests,
but it was still nowhere near the level
that the government had promised.
Testing centers were not evenly distributed around the country,
and it was often unclear how to get tested.
-Since we're so low on coronavirus tests,
you essentially need to get,
like, recommended by your primary-care provider,
but more so than that,
they needed to get state authorization to get tests
and, like, order a test for you.
-We've been scrambling to find those labs with tests.
There's an incredible shortage.
We have three hospital systems in Camden County.
We speak to those systems each day.
They've just been able to get their hands on some tests
within the last week,
and they don't have enough tests.
-Trump again tried to reassure
people that the tests were coming.
-Testing and testing capabilities
are expanding rapidly day by day.
We are moving very quickly.
-It's clear that effort fell far short.
The US went from 11 confirmed cases to nearly 100,000
in a matter of weeks.
Still, in comparison to other countries,
experts say the US is behind in its efforts to test,
a fact that can at least in part be attributed to the failures
in the administration's ability to cut red tape.
The federal government failed to pivot, adapt,
or respond at several critical points.
The President spent nearly two months
issuing confusing and contradictory signals,
leaving the bureaucratic machine of the US government
to chart the course for the response.
The FDA picked a conservative testing strategy,
and the executive branch did nothing.
When the CDC test failed, neither a new strategy
nor a new test were available for more than two weeks.
By the time the government changed course,
the virus was out of control.
Now, it's not just the number of tests that are the problem.
It's getting the materials to do the tests
and the personal protective equipment for providers
to give those tests.
That means we may never have a true count
of how many Americans contracted the virus.