When Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, announced the purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea last week, he called it “an exponential, game-changing step forward” in the state’s effort to get more people tested.

The dramatic story drew notice from Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and a dismissive swipe from fellow Republican, Donald Trump.

But more than 10 days after the chartered Korean Air plane landed, Maryland has not allowed access to the tests kits, much to the frustration of local, state and federal leaders seeking to alleviate community testing shortages.

“None of the kits have been deployed, and no one knows when they will be,” Harford county executive Barry Glassman, a Republican, said on Tuesday afternoon. “In the environment that’s out there, that need is not being met.”

In conference calls with local and federal officials over the past two weeks, the Hogan administration said the tests were hung up by regulatory hurdles and shortages of other testing supplies that have throttled testing capacity nationwide, according to multiple people who participated.

Mr Hogan publicly described a different reality on Wednesday, when he outlined for the first time how he will use the tests. He said he would prioritise universal testing in nursing homes and other hot spots, such as an outbreak at a poultry plant on Maryland’s eastern shore.

The governor said the kits would also bolster testing for health-care workers and first responders. As a fifth priority, he would expand the broad, community-based testing experts say is critical to easing shutdown restrictions.

“As soon as we got the tests, everybody was like, ‘Can we have 100,000 of those tests?’” Mr Hogan said of local leaders. “First of all, the state is going to maintain those tests. We’re not just going to send them off to people.”

Mr Hogan's spokesman, Michael Ricci, said there is no imminent shortage of swabs or other testing supplies significant enough to limit output at state-controlled labs.

Two private labs have been contracted to use the South Korean kits, Mr Ricci said, and one cleared the necessary regulatory hurdle a week ago. Along with the state lab, he said, the private labs are adequately stocked to ramp up state testing to as much as 2,200 samples per day. This does not include capacity in hospital and commercial labs.

The state official described specific shortages in nasal swabs, viral transport media and reagents, outlining a scenario that would allow Maryland to use less than 1 per cent of the South Korean test kits (Getty)

When asked why state officials offered different information in their closed-door conversations with county leaders and congressional staffers, another of Mr Hogan's aide said the administration has been cautious about conveying the extent of its resources while it is trying to secure additional testing supplies. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategies.

Additionally, despite the fanfare surrounding Mr Hogan’s $9.4m (£7.5m) dollar deal with LabGenomics, the test kits from Seoul were not in short supply in the United States, according to interviews with industry experts. Domestic manufacturers were producing millions of them per week when Maryland struck its overseas deal.

Some firms sell the kits for 20 to 30 per cent less than what Mr Hogan paid.

Mr Ricci said the state picked the Korean company weeks before the shipment arrived, when market conditions were different, “based on a number of factors, including compatibility with our labs, market availability, reasonable market price, delivery methods and coordination, and overall trust and communication with the vendor.”

On Tuesday afternoon, a state health department official told congressional staffers that Maryland was missing critical testing components and had only enough supplies on hand to conduct 3,200 tests in state-directed labs, according to multiple people on the call.

The state official described specific shortages in nasal swabs, viral transport media and reagents, outlining a scenario that would allow Maryland to use less than 1 per cent of the South Korean test kits.

State officials have offered no timetable for when the tests might be ready for community-based testing, according to interviews with local, state and federal officials involved in expanding Maryland’s testing efforts (Getty)

State officials have offered no timetable for when the tests might be ready for community-based testing, according to interviews with local, state and federal officials involved in expanding Maryland’s testing efforts, which rank in the middle of the pack among states.

One official said leaders of some of Maryland’s largest jurisdictions have become so frustrated they’ve discussed trying to obtain their own tests since they can’t access the ones from South Korea. Experts say dramatically enhanced community-based testing is critical to understanding the spread of the virus. Without more testing, it’s impossible to identify, track and isolate new cases.

“If they have all of those pieces, it’s time to get them into the hands of people who need them,” the official said, who requested anonymity to be candid about private conversations. “We know there’s a need. These sitting in a state warehouse somewhere doesn’t do anyone any good.”

Local governments have worked to set up testing sites, where patient samples are collected via nasal swab and transferred to a lab for processing using the type of test kit Mr Hogan acquired. In general, those sites will only take as many samples as labs can process in a timely way.

Mr Hogan has said the South Korean tests are critical to meeting his goal of testing 10,000 people per day. At the news conference where he announced the purchase, he said he hoped to double that threshold, even as he acknowledged that the state would need more swabs, reagents and lab capacity to meet it.

Representative Anthony Brown, Democrat of Maryland, said Mr Hogan’s initial announcement led him to believe that Maryland was poised to implement widespread testing.

Donald Trump has said that testing will need to increase to re-open the economy, but the poorest Americans would still not consider seeking healthcare (AFP) (AFP via Getty Images)

“What we learned over time is that’s not accurate,” Mr Brown said Wednesday. “A test means that you can take a sample and get a result, and he’s not able to do that for 500,000 Marylanders.”

Until the state can reach the ability to test 10,000 people per day, Mr Brown said, Maryland residents are “going to stay locked up in our homes”.

County leaders from the state’s major jurisdictions have been on at least two calls in the past 11 days with state officials, including with Mr Hogan himself, asking whether they can get some of the South Korean tests and when they can expand their own testing sites.

Baltimore County opened two new testing sites this week but is limiting the access to 320 people per week because labs cannot process more.

“The test kits from South Korea are just a piece of the puzzle and still need the appropriate swabs, reagents and lab capacity,” said Sean Naron, a spokesman for Baltimore county executive Johnny Olszewski, a Democrat. “We are still waiting on a clear timeline from the state on when all these pieces will come together.”

In recent weeks, scarcities in testing have been due to a lack of nasal swabs to collect samples and the chemical reagents to process them (Getty)

The South Korea test situation has devolved to the point that Montgomery county executive Marc Elrich, a Democrat, started laughing Wednesday when a reporter asked about access to the tests.“Without things like reagents,” Elrich said, “they are sort of like paperweights.”

Mr Hogan has consistently described his purchase of the tests as a necessary workaround after the federal government left it up to states to source their own testing programmes in circumstances that pitted governors against each other.

On The View, he said he had to go abroad to find “the test kits that nobody had enough of”.

In recent weeks, however, it has not been a shortage of the assays themselves that created national scarcities in testing, but the lack of the nasal swabs to collect samples and the chemical reagents to process them, experts say.

“If somebody had come to us a few weeks ago and said we need a large order for Maryland, we would have been very anxious and capable of taking the order and fulfilling it,” said Dwight Egan, CEO of a Co-Diagnostics, a company that makes the same type of assays Mr Hogan acquired from South Korea.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Show all 13 1 /13 Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said. Photos Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said. Reuters

“We’re shipping to nearly 50 countries,” he said. “We always love to ship in the United States because it’s a lot easier to ship domestically than foreign.”

A distributor for Co-Diagnostics offered Maryland more than 500,000 tests at a cheaper cost during a call on 10 April, according to a person familiar with the pitch who requested anonymity to avoid scuttling future potential business.

Mr Ricci, Mr Hogan’s spokesman, said Maryland had signed a contract for the South Korean purchase just over a week before that, on 2 April. Mr Hogan has said he and his Korean-born wife, Yumi Hogan, began working on the deal on 28 March.

The state reached out to several domestic suppliers along with the Korean companies in late March, Mr Ricci said, but at the time none could offer the volume and guarantees the state was seeking.

The United States got off to a slow start in its efforts to test for the coronavirus after delays this year caused by federal red tape and an initial flawed test created by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Other countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, ramped up more quickly. But US manufacturers worked fast to catch up.

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By mid-March, US manufacturers were able to ship tests to domestic labs by the millions. On 18 March, Co-Diagnostics announced it could produce about 50,000 tests per day. Thermo Fisher Scientific announced on March 16 that it had 1.5 million tests on hand and expected to quickly increase production to 2 million tests per week, and the company has since reported it has ramped up to 5 million tests per week, many of which are being exported globally.

“No one is saying that they can’t get the test kits anymore. They’ve got those, and the manufacturers are certainly turning them out,” said Lâle White, chief executive of XIFIN, a health information technology company that services a substantial portion of the nation’s commercial and public diagnostic labs and produces industry analytics.

Eric Blank, chief programme officer for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, agreed. “As far as we can tell, there is not a shortage of the test kits,” Blank said in an emailed statement. “There are, and have been, shortages in the ancillary reagents and supplies like swabs throughout the response to date.”

Nevertheless, Maryland is not the only US entity to buy tests abroad. This month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency bought 600,000 tests from two South Korean companies for a total of $8.2m (£6.5m).

Mr Hogan initially said Maryland paid $9m (£7.2m) for its tests, a figure that state officials slightly revised upward Wednesday to $9,464,389 (£7,573,025).

That means Maryland paid $18.93 (£15.15) per test, while FEMA paid approximately $13.67 (£10.94).

In a statement, Mr Ricci said Maryland’s price “was considered reasonable based on market value”.