WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — The U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine’s epidemiology laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force base is testing and processing COVID-19 samples sent from military treatment facilities around the world.
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The Defense Health Agency authorized the laboratory to test the samples in early March.
Right now, the lab is only permitted to test samples coming in from Department of Defense beneficiaries.
Per CDC guidelines, reference laboratories like this one are no longer required to submit samples to the CDC for final confirmation. That means the epidemiology lab gets positive tests, it can mark the samples as "confirmed positive."
Leaders for the laboratory say it is not participating in vaccine development.