DC lab botched Zika tests involving pregnant women according to : The Washington Post

The lab processed 409 Zika tests, including 294 for pregnant women. Health officials in the District have been encouraging all pregnant women to be tested for Zika if they or their sexual partners have traveled to Zika affected areas. The problem at the District's public health lab was discovered by Anthony Tran, who took over in the fall. He began to suspect something was wrong when all 409 of the secondary Zika tests returned negative results. Accurate testing for pregnant women is particularly urgent because the virus can cause severe defects in developing fetuses, especially early in the pregnancy.




"A relatively inexperienced staff and a lack of leadership — that's a bad combination," said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which works to safeguard the integrity of public health labs nationwide. In the year before it confronted Zika, the public health lab was shedding its most experienced staff — for a variety of reasons. The D.C. health lab successfully did so and got permission in late May to begin its own Zika testing program, Tran said. When Anthony Tran took over the District's public health lab late last year, he had a feeling something was wrong with its testing for the Zika virus. He had just come from the public health lab in New York City, where technicians had been finding markers for Zika in the blood of arriving travelers almost every day.

6 more positive Zika results returned after DC lab error - Story

6 more positive Zika results returned after DC lab error Local News 6 more positive Zika results returned after DC lab error Additional Zika virus re-test results are back at DC's Department of Forensic Sciences, and FOX 5 has learned that more have come back positive. DFS says one of the cases is 100 percent Zika, and the other positive results will be treated as Zika but could be Dengue. - Additional Zika virus re-test results are back at DC's Department of Forensic Sciences, and FOX 5 has learned that more have come back positive. This comes after news last week that two pregnant women who were initially told they did not have the Zika virus learned they had actually tested positive. Six new cases which could be Zika came back positive, for a total of eight cases so far.



collected by :Lucy William
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