Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday that at least 40 public health labs can currently test specimens for coronavirus and that could more than double as soon as tomorrow.
Azar told the House Ways and Means Committee that a newly manufactured CDC test can be sent to 93 public health labs as soon as Monday, and a privately manufactured test based on the new CDC test could be sent to those same labs as early as tomorrow, pending FDA clearance.
He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tested 3,625 specimens for the fast-moving virus as of this morning. He said at least 40 labs currently have test kits that were previously manufactured by the CDC that were modified to test for coronavirus.
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