The Trump administration has blocked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from regulating a wide swath of laboratory tests, including ones for the coronavirus.
The new policy, which was posted Wednesday and is strongly opposed by the FDA itself, stunned health experts and laboratories because of its timing, the Washington Post reported.
The change could result in unreliable coronavirus tests getting on the market, potentially worsening the testing crisis in the United States, experts told the newspaper. The one thing the change won’t do is solve testing shortages, because those are due mostly to a lack of the swabs and chemical reagents needed to perform COVID-19 tests, the Post reported.
