The New York Times:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly modified its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus.
Experts questioned the revision, pointing to the importance of identifying infections in the brief window immediately before the onset of symptoms, when many individuals are thought to be most contagious…
A more lax approach to testing, experts said, could delay crucial treatments, as well as obscure the coronavirus’s true spread in the community. Case numbers remain persistently high across much of the United States, though they have been falling in recent weeks, to an average of about 43,000 new cases a day from a peak of more than 66,000 a month ago. Many of the states that saw the largest outbreaks in early summer are now reporting sustained progress, including Arizona and Florida. But parts of the Midwest, as well as Hawaii and some U.S. territories, are still seeing increases in new cases.
“This is potentially dangerous,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician in Palo Alto, Calif. Restricting testing to only people with obvious symptoms of Covid-19 means “you’re not looking for a lot of people who are potential spreaders of disease,” she added. “I feel like this is going to make things worse.”
Prior iterations of the C.D.C.’s testing guidelines struck a markedly different tone, explicitly stating that “testing is recommended for all close contacts” of people infected with the coronavirus, regardless of symptoms. The agency also specifically emphasized “the potential for asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission” as an important factor in the spread of disease.
A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN. “It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yeah: