How should this message from the CDC be interpretted?
Why is the CDC removing authorization for this test?
This is the CDC post in question: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...
This is the CDC post in question: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-viral-posts-misre...
From the article:
In explaining the CDC’s decision to end the use of its own PCR test at the end of 2021, Kristen Nordlund, an agency spokeswoman, in an email to us cited “the availability of commercial options for clinical diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including multiplexed (discussed here) and high-throughput options” — referring to technologies that use an automated process to administer hundreds of tests per day.
“Although the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019 nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel met an important unmet need when it was developed and deployed and has not demonstrated any performance issues, the demand for this test has declined with the emergence of other higher-throughput and multiplexed assays,” Nordlund said.
She continued: “CDC is encouraging public health laboratories (PHL) to adopt the CDC Influenza SARS-CoV-2 (Flu SC2) Multiplex Assay to enable continued surveillance for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2, which will save both time and resources for PHL.”
Given that they were withdrawing it with several months' advance notice, I doubt there was anything massively wrong with it.
Just because there are tests that can do both Influenza and Covid, does not mean that this test would need to be retracted.