Commission Report: Diagnostics for Biodefense – Flying Blind with No Plan to Land

In a new special focus report, Diagnostics for Biodefense – Flying Blind with No Plan to Land, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense provides an approach that would ensure the United States can rapidly develop innovative point-of-care and point-of-need diagnostic tests for COVID-19 and other novel, emerging, and reemerging infectious diseases when they occur. The United States failed to develop and distribute a reliable diagnostic test when COVID-19 first struck. While the country stumbled for weeks, others such as Germany, South Korea and Taiwan developed diagnostic tests and established testing infrastructure that allowed them to control the spread of the virus and reduce death rates.