University of Minnesota infectious disease center director Dr. Michaelm Osterholm was very blunt when referring to a senior FDA official's opinion on the massive number of coronavirus tests that are already out there.
"He said, yep, he knows that a lot of them are crap."
Osterholm said the unnamed official was on a conference call last week with state health laboratory directors when the subject came up.
"Now, that should not instill confidence in people out there getting those tests," Osterholm told Dave Lee on the WCCO Morning News.
Osterholm said it's critical that any testing, either with cotton swabs or through blood tests, should be thorough, and not rushed.
"We need to have as much data as we can to understand how we live with this virus, how we suppress it, how we open back up to society," he said. "But we don't want to rush in with bad testing. Right now, that's one of the challenges that we have."
It's all a matter of confidence in those tests, confidence that will spill over into other aspects of society that's right now on hold.