Congressman Dan BishopKonto zweryfikowane

As of March 14 at 8:00 a.m., the state of North Carolina has a total of 680 public (i.e., non-commercial) #coronavirus test kits. So the big question is, “Why don’t we have more tests?” Here’s the situation:

First, there’s a difference between “test kits” and “extraction kits.” Extraction kits = extract RNA (genetic material) from nasal swabs. Test kits = test RNA to see if it’s coronavirus.

We started with a national shortage of test kits. That happened because the CDC - after rejecting the WHO kits and deciding to make their own - had a manufacturing error that allowed their test kit to produce false positives. So they had to start over several weeks in.

To make matters worse, while the CDC was fixing their manufacturing error there were many other labs across the country (academic and commercial labs) that wanted to produce their own test kits. But they needed federal approval and it took a couple of weeks.

It appears we are now seeing the production of test kits ramp up from both the CDC and commercial labs like LabCorp (which happens to be headquartered here in North Carolina). BUT that leads us to our second problem, and the current major bottleneck: extraction kits.

Senator, this portion of your narrative is incorrect. LabCorp’s current LDT test does not use the same extraction methodology or supplies as is relied upon by the State public health lab. Moreover, LabCorp has been capable of running “thousands” of tests per day since 3/5. ...