The Wall St.Journal 28Feb2020

A6| Friday, February 28, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

confined to China and infec-

tions were limited to a small

set of Americans who had re-

turned from China, were close

family members of people with

confirmed infections or had

sailed on the Diamond Princess

cruise ship in Asia, experts say.

The U.S. has 60 people with

confirmed cases, including 45

individuals repatriated to the

U.S.

California Gov. Gavin

Newsom said on Thursday that

33 people had tested positive

for coronavirus in California,

and that state health officials

are working with the CDC to

expand diagnostic-testing ca-

pacity. The state has 200 test-

ing kits available, which the

governor called “simply inade-

quate to do justice to the kind

of testing that is required to

address this issue head-on.”

As the virus threatens to

spread, however, public-health

experts say the current efforts

will likely need to shift.

“The strategies, in some re-

spect, have been effective as

long as it has been confined to

China,” said Barbara Ferrer,

director of the Los Angeles

County Department of Public

Health. “I don’t think anyone

in public health would think

this would last forever.”

Health and Human Services

Secretary Alex Azar told law-

makers on Thursday that more

than 3,000 patient specimens

had been tested and at least

40 public-health laboratories

are now able to test, up from

12 earlier this week.

“The immediate risk to the

American public remains low, in

significant part because of the

president’s aggressive actions

so far,” Mr. Azar, who is leading

a federal coronavirus task force,

said at a House Ways and

Means budget hearing.

The perils of the limited ap-

proach emerged this week,

when a California resident

without a connection to travel

in places where the Covid-

virus is circulating or known

exposure to a confirmed case

was diagnosed with the novel

coronavirus infection.

The patient, who is from

Solano County north of San

Francisco, was transferred to

University of California, Davis,

Medical Center from another

Northern California hospital

with a suspected viral infec-

tion, according to a letter the

medical center sent on

Wednesday to employees.

The hospital asked public-

health officials if the patient

might be infected with the

coronavirus, the letter said,

and requested testing from the

CDC since neither the state

nor county health labs were

testing at the time.

But the CDC delayed testing

the patient because the person

didn’t have any relevant travel

history to China or known

contact with a case, according

to the letter.

The CDC ordered the test on

Sunday, while UC Davis staff

took stricter precautions with

the patient, the letter said. The

CDC’s testing confirmed a cor-

onavirus infection Wednesday.

On Thursday, the CDC

broadened the criteria for

testing to include people who

have symptoms and a recent

travel history to Iran, Italy,

Japan and South Korea, as

well as anyone with a fever

and severe respiratory illness

without another diagnosis,

such as influenza.

Local public-health depart-

ments and health-care provid-

ers say they also need to have

tests nearby so time and effort

aren’t lost shipping samples to

the CDC in Atlanta.

So far, only the CDC’s test

has been approved by the FDA

for use.

WASHINGTON—A whistle-

blower alleges that some federal

employees were sent to work at

coronavirus quarantine loca-

tions in California without ade-

quate safety protocols and then

flew back home on commercial

airplanes, a person familiar with

the complaint against the De-

partment of Health and Human

Services said.

The complaint, which HHS

said it was evaluating, focuses

on some employees who work

at the Administration for Chil-

dren and Families, an HHS divi-

sion that handles programs

such as Head Start and disaster

emergency response and that

performed functions at some of

the quarantine camps.

The U.S. repatriated Ameri-

cans from China on planes char-

tered by the State Department

in early February. They were

subject to 14-day quarantines.

Employees didn’t receive

prior safety training relevant to

the California assignment, the

whistleblower alleges, the per-

son familiar with the complaint

said. The employee who filed

the complaint said she declined

to go to one of the quarantine

sites and was then reassigned

for raising concerns about em-

ployee safety, the person famil-

iar with the complaint said.

The employees weren’t

tested for the coronavirus be-

fore they left two California

quarantine sites and flew home,

the person familiar with the

complaint said. There is no evi-

dence that any of the workers

contracted or spread the virus.

Caitlin Oakley, a spokes-

woman at HHS, said on Thurs-

day: “We take all whistle-

blower complaints very

seriously and are providing

the complainant all appropri-

ate protections under the

Whistleblower Protection Act.”

BYSTEPHANIEARMOUR

ANDNATALIEANDREWS

Lapses

In Safety

Protocols

Alleged

WORLD NEWS

Federal authorities took
steps to bolster capabilities for
quickly diagnosing coronavirus
infections and expanded crite-
ria for who should undergo
testing, as the respiratory dis-
ease threatened to spread
more widely across the U.S.
The Food and Drug Admin-
istration on Wednesday said it
was streamlining the authori-
zation process for the more
than 70 developers designing
tests for the novel virus. And
the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention sped up
the rollout of a test it devel-
oped, a public-health associa-
tion official said.
The CDC’s decision on
Thursday to expand the test-
ing criteria came after it
emerged that a California pa-
tient with a confirmed infec-
tion didn’t have a recent travel
history to China or known ex-
posure to the virus required
by the earlier guidelines.
The moves come as the
Trump administration con-
fronts concerns about its re-
sponse to the crisis, especially
with many experts predicting
cases to spread more widely
across the country.
Federal public-health au-
thorities so far have focused
their coronavirus efforts on
containment of a relatively
narrow set of people at the
highest risk of infection. The
CDC has been testing patients
with symptoms in the U.S. if
they have recently traveled to
China, where the epidemic
originated, or been in contact
with a confirmed case.
Meanwhile, state and local
health departments have been
keeping tabs on thousands of
people who had recently re-
turned from China.
The government’s targeted
approach made more sense
when the epidemic was largely

BYBRIANNAABBOTT

U.S. Bolsters Its Virus Response

FDA eases process for

test developers, while

CDC speeds up rollout

of new examination

An image from an electron microscope shows an isolate from the first U.S. case of the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19.

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

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