BOSTON - The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has received approval to begin testing for coronavirus disease 2019 in patients suspected of having the rapidly-moving respiratory virus in the state.

This means the DPH will not have to wait for confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether a patient under investigation is positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus behind the global outbreak of COVID-19.

“We are pleased that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has now given approval to the Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory to begin testing patients for COVID-19, in accordance with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," said Dr. Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel, the state’s public health commissioner, in a statement on the DPH website.

“This means clinicians who have patients they think may have symptoms consistent with COVID-19 who meet the current CDC definition of a Person Under Investigation can contact the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to discuss their patients and receive authorization to submit specimens for testing.”

She added, "This change is good news for Massachusetts as testing at the State Public Health Laboratory will speed up obtaining test results for Persons Under Investigation and expedite ongoing testing of any confirmed case in recovery.”

The anticipated turnaround of test results from the state lab will take 24 hours, depending on testing volume, according to the DPH, which also said that it had received an adequate supply of test kits from the CDC to begin testing.

Massachusetts to date has only one confirmed case of COVID-2019, whose symptoms are much like the flu, and the risk for exposure in the commonwealth is considered low.

The confirmed case in Massachusetts is travel related and the DPH has been monitoring a few hundred individuals in self quarantine after travel to China.

Bharel’s statement also said that the DPH will begin to release weekly monitoring updates of COVID-19 in the commonwealth beginning Wednesday, March 4.

It also said individuals who are in voluntary self-quarantine continue to be monitored by the local boards of health.

There are currently 65 cases of COVID-19 in the United States, the majority travel-related, but the most recent cases on the West Coast may be evidence of community spread, which means of unknown exposure, according to the CDC.

The majority of the more than 80,000 worldwide cases, most of them in China where the disease originated, are mild, but the virus can be severe, causing pneumonia-like complications, particularly in older patients with underlying medical conditions.

There are no medications approved for treatment or vaccines.

The CDC has said prevention in the form of good hygiene practices, such as frequent hand washing, is one of the best measures to avoid infection from any virus.

The World Health Organization has increased the assessment of its risk of spread and risk of impact of COVID-19 to very high at the global level.

There have been at least 78,961 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China, and 2,791 deaths, and at least 4,691 confirmed cases and more than 67 deaths outside of China.

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