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FDA responds to Gov. DeWine's request for testing supplies

Testing is key to getting the state's economy moving again, but there's a shortage of a key element.

CLEVELAND — You may have heard Governor DeWine on Sunday's Meet The Press ask the FDA for help with a component of COVID testing.

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The agency is coming through, according to DeWine. 

Dr. Amy Acton estimates anywhere from five to fifteen percent of Ohioans may have been exposed or carrying the virus, yet only 7 tenths of a percent of the state's population has been tested. Testing is key to getting the economy moving again, but there's a shortage of a key element.

It's called reagent. It's a component needed to do a COVID test to extract RNA from the virus. 

When COVID attaches to a cell, it injects a small piece of RNA into the cell, which forces it to replicate the virus. In order to detect the virus in a lab test, they have to be able to isolate that unique RNA away from everything else.

That's what the reagent does.

The good news is that the FDA told DeWine several companies are trying to make more and one is close to approval. 

"The more companies that we can get out there providing reagent so that the supply chain of reagent is, hospitals don't have to worry about that supply chain and they know they can run an unlimited number, that's going to make a big difference," DeWine said during his briefing on Monday.

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Meanwhile, Ohio has to help itself. Two independent labs have now been re-approved to perform more tests. 

"We were saying to our labs, 'Don't use LabCorp before because they were very, very behind.' But they've caught up, they've said, so we loosened that so hospitals can send directly to LabCorp and Quest and the other labs now and we're going to closely monitor," Acton added. 

Ohio is already beefing up test kids, but along with the rest of the nation, it is waiting for a steady supply of reagent to keep the labs working at capacity so there's not another back-up.

Click here for our coronavirus section.

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