The public health laboratory at Washington, D.C.'s has to repeat hundreds of Zika tests. There are almost 300 women that they have to test again because of the said mistake.
In December, the laboratory at Washington, D.C. has tested nearly 300 pregnant women for the Zika virus. However, when the lab tests came out, they were all negative. It has alarmed the officials and when they checked, it showed that they skipped a procedure. Those tests were gathered from July 14 until Dec. 14 of 2016, the lab said in a statement on its website. Reuters has reported that the lab have to re-sent the 409 specimens for another testing.
There were 294 pregnant women in the samples, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC will be testing them again together with 115 tests from men and non-pregnant women that were sent to other CDC-approved public health labs.
According to Austrian Tribune, there were 62 lab test result that came back already. Only two of those were tested positive. The result only confirmed that those women were affected by flavivirus. Flavivirus is only a family of Zika, Chikungunya and dengue."What that means is that we did see evidence of past infection, but we can't say for sure it's Zika," said Dr. Wendi Kuhnert-Tallman, who co-leads the CDC's Zika lab task force.
CDC has already finished 100 more tests. Its results will be sent back to the lab and the doctors who ordered them. Another 129 are still pending, Kuhnert-Tallman explained. In two to three weeks, everything will be finished, he added.
Zika virus has infected more than 500,000 people in nearly three dozen countries in 2015. It is very damaging to pregnant women as the baby inside them will have birth defects. The shortcomings include some grave harm on the brain and nervous system of their embryonic babies. It can also affect the baby's vision and hearing. Microcephaly or small head size is the strongest sign of it.
