Reuters, WASHINGTONThe US Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday said that it is investigating a manufacturing defect in some initial COVID-19 test kits that prompted some US states to seek emergency approval to use their own test kits. The FDA on Saturday said that it would allow some laboratories to immediately use tests they have developed and validated to achieve more rapid testing capacity for the coronavirus. On Sunday, New York confirmed its first case of the disease. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement on Sunday that “upon learning about the test issue from CDC [the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], FDA worked with CDC to determine that problems with certain test components were due to a manufacturing issue. Hahn said that the “FDA has confidence in the design and current manufacturing of the test that already have [been] and are continuing to be distributed.”

Source: Taipei Times March 02, 2020 16:07 UTC