#Helen-Chu is the Allergy and Infectious Disease Program Lead at the University of Washington department of #Epidemiology. #covid #history
on 02025-07-11#news from March 10, 02020 how #Helen-Chu at the University of Washington discovered that covid had spread to #USA. She was running the Seattle Flu Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in association with the Washington State Department of Health, whose state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist requested her to test for #covid, but was blocked by the FDA from telling the people who had it, because “the group was not certified to provide test results to anyone outside of their own investigators.” The FDA's repeated refusal was “because the lab was not certified as a clinical laboratory [just a research laboratory, which has much higher standards] under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months.” The CDC was also trying to develop tests, but the tests they shipped were defective. Meanwhile the Seattle Flu Study sequenced the genome of the virus and discovered that a new variant had arisen. All of this was in late February. “On March 2, the Seattle Flu Study’s institutional review board at the University of Washington determined that it would be unethical for the researchers not to test and report the results in a public health emergency, Dr. Starita said. Since then, her laboratory has found and reported numerous additional cases, all of which have been confirmed.” But then, “on Monday night [presumably March 8], state regulators, enforcing Medicare rules, stepped in and again told them to stop until they could finish getting certified as a clinical laboratory, a process that could take many weeks.” #history
on 02025-07-11