In a heated exchange late last month on CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper pressed Adm. Brett Giroir, the Health and Human Services assistant secretary who oversees COVID-19 testing efforts for the Trump administration, on why the government isn’t requiring commercial labs to increase testing capacity in order to speed turnaround time.
Giroir’s response described a series of steps some unusual being taken by the federal government. One focus was on the role veterinary labs, including those with special certification, could play in helping to build capacity. “Five veterinary labs have their CLIA certification to officially test human patients,” he said. “There are a lot of labs who are doing surveillance testing that don’t need the CLIA certification.”
He was referring to certification under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988, a federal law that sets the standard for labs that test human specimens.
So that got us wondering: Can labs that test cattle, chickens or your pet Fido run tests on humans? And, if so, what role are they playing in the national pandemic, and how much is it helping?