"The next big crisis, from my standpoint, is the inability to get the reagents necessary to run the COVID-19 ID testing," Iwen said in a phone interview. "We here, as well as every public health lab and most labs in the nation, are trying to use the same vendors for extraction kits to run the test." Not having the extraction kits is like trying to bake a cake without one of the essential ingredients, Iwen added. "We can't run a test if we don't have all of our ingredients, and right now, one of our ingredients is almost impossible to get." That's why Iwen put out a "blast email" to ask if any research labs could dedicate non-expired extraction kits to support their COVID-19 testing efforts.

Source: Daily Sun March 20, 2020 12:00 UTC