WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. military laboratories have started receiving their own testing kits to determine whether American troops have the new coronavirus, officials said, after relying on outside testing in the roughly two months since China reported the first cases.
But capacity is still limited, as is the distribution of the test kits, they say.
U.S. military commanders, responsible for the more than a million active duty forces at home and abroad, are under pressure to quickly identify and contain any appearance of the virus on bases around the world, where troops often live and work in close quarters.
As of Monday, at least 34 U.S. Defense Department personnel, dependents and beneficiaries had been evaluated worldwide for the coronavirus, a U.S. official told Reuters. Those tests have resulted in a handful of confirmed cases including at least one U.S. servicemember, officials say.
But until at le