With the CDC already under fire for fomenting confusion by changing its COVID isolation guidelines, now the Food and Drug Administration is also fielding criticism from a former member of the Biden administration.
Dr. Celine Gounder, a former member of President Joe Biden’s advisory board, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend that she believes the FDA has been too slow to green-light rapid-response COVID tests for the purpose of determine just how contagious COVID-positive individuals are.
“The FDA under both the Trump and Biden administrations has really dragged its feet on authorizing these rapid antigen for the purpose of assessing 'are people contagious or not,” Gounder said. “We have real world evidence that the rapid antigen tests are a good measure of contagiousness but the FDA has not authorized them for that purpose.”
While this may have been a blind spot for the FDA, it has made some significant authorizations of late, allowing everyone age 12 and above to receive the COVID vaccine booster shot and approving pills to treat COVID-19 from two different pharmaceutical manufacturers, Merck and Pfizer.
Meanwhile, Gounder’s criticism also extended to both the current members of the Biden administration and the companies manufacturing the rapid antigen tests, saying more tests should have been available to meet the holiday season demand.
Rapid-reponse COVID tests are currently either hard-to-find or non-existent in many areas of the country even though Biden said in December that the federal government would foot the bill for 500 million at-home tests to help push back the omicron surge.
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