Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)

A Miami woman said Monday that she was told by doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital that she “most likely” contracted coronavirus while traveling in Italy, but was not tested and was instead sent home to self-quarantine because state and federal health officials refused to authorize an official screening,

The woman told a local CBS News affiliate that after she was admitted to the hospital, her “preliminary tests came back rather alarming because I tested positively for two strains of the previous coronavirus.” She went to the hospital as her health steadily declined following a week in Northern Italy.


After showing signs of infection, the woman claims her doctor said “that there was basically nothing he could do,” because the Center for Disease Control and Prevention would not authorize a test in her case because she was not considered “high-risk” — being young and otherwise healthy. She would be the first known case of coronavirus in south Florida.

“The doctor himself told me that, you know, he thinks that the results of my tests mean that I most likely have the COVID-19, but that the Department of Health did not want to pursue it further,” said the woman, who requested anonymity. “It was either the Department of Health or the CDC that decided not to further pursue the inquiry. But I was basically told that it is most likely that I have this virus and that I should self-quarantine.”

The U.S. has struggled to screen patients for coronavirus, in part because the CDC has been slow to roll out its coronavirus test for public health labs due to diagnostic problems. Politico reported Monday that the CDC tested less than 500 Americans in January and February for the virus, with the FDA finally granting local hospitals and other labs the authority to develop their own homegrown tests over the weekend — over six weeks after the first U.S. case of coronavirus was discovered.


Last week, UC Davis Medical Center officials revealed that they had asked for a patient to be tested for days, but were denied by the CDC because “the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria.”

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