Bureaucratic restrictions on testing for disease prevented the US authorities from catching the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in their country, Aleksander Myasnikov, the chief physician of a Moscow hospital and a TV show host, said on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd March, 2020) Bureaucratic restrictions on testing for disease prevented the US authorities from catching the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in their country, Aleksander Myasnikov, the chief physician of a Moscow hospital and a tv show host, said on Monday.
"The United States, like Italy, also missed the beginning of the outbreak of the coronavirus infection. And for purely bureaucratic reasons. The FDA, the food and Drug Administration, the main Federal agency in the United States that controls all medicine there, and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, did not allow laboratories to use their tests, without prior approval by these control authorities, which takes many months at ordinary times (or even years!)," Myasnikov wrote on his Telegram channel.
The doctor added that the CDC also banned the use of tests for patients without obvious symptoms. As a result, no one noticed the first cases in California and the virus quickly spread. The authorities realized what was happening only when hundreds had already been infected, he said.
The legal obstacles were only lifted on March 3 by Vice President Mike Pence, who said that every citizen had the right to be tested, Myasnikov noted.
The US has confirmed so far over 35,000 cases of the disease and 471 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, Italy, the worst-hit country in Europe, has registered over 59,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths.
