North Korean authorities told citizens in public lectures that there were confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the country as early as the end of March, in contrast to official Pyongyang claims that it has not had any confirmed cases, Radio Free Asia reported on late Friday.
The lecturers, speaking to organisations and neighbourhood watch groups, said there were COVID-19 cases within the country, without giving any numbers, Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing two sources, one in Pyongyang and one in Ryanggang province.
The lecturers said the confirmed cases were in Pyongyang, South Hwanghae province and North Hamgyong province, RFA reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was delayed in quickly producing a test kit for the coronavirus after contamination was found at some of its facilities, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
The CDC facilities that manufacture the kits reportedly violated manufacturing practices, resulting in a contamination of one of the three components used in the testing process.
The contamination is believed to have occurred after chemical mixtures were assembled into the kits in the same lab space that was handling synthetic coronavirus material. The proximity of the chemicals and the synthetic material violated working procedures.
CDC officials were forced to take more than a month to resolve the testing mix-up, which worsened national delays in the production and distribution of kits, according to the Post’s examination of federal documents and interviews with more than 30 present and former federal scientists and others familiar with the events.
The production and dissemination of the test kits are currently the subject of an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The CDC told the Post that its efforts “were not sufficient in this circumstance” and that the agency has “implemented enhanced quality control to address the issue.”
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Issues with the test were reportedly first noticed in January after the CDC distributed kits to 26 public health labs across the country. People with knowledge of the issue said false positives were reported at 24 of the 26 sites.
The false positives were reported during testing of “negative control’’ samples that contained highly purified water and no genetic material. That phase of testing is crucial in confirming if tests’ results are reliable.
“The bottom line is, if you have a negative sample, and it’s coming up positive, the only way for that to happen is cross contamination. ... There is no other explanation for it,” a scientist said.
The delay in testing prevented public health labs from performing the initial surveillance necessary to try to predict and blunt the coronavirus’s spread in the U.S. before it became more widespread.
An examination of the CDC’s testing kit by the Food and Drug Administration found no issues with its design but faulted the agency’s manufacturing practices in explaining the delay in distribution.
“I was just saddened and embarrassed when this test didn’t work out,” James Le Duc, a virologist and former CDC official who now is director of the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, told the Post. “It’s really a terrible black mark on the CDC, and the impact was devastating to the country.”
It’s hard to imagine two more eager blood donors than the men who bared their arms Friday and made Cincinnati’s first contributions to a just-begun clinical study of plasma as a treatment for the lung disease resulting from the novel coronaviruss.
“I am feeling so good, feeling so much energy,” said Mohammad Alagha of Clifton, an engineer at General Electric, mere hours after making the first donation to Hoxworth Blood Center, which is producing the plasma for the clinical trial in the region. “I’m encouraging people who were sick to do that, to see if they can qualify to donate.”
