NYC health officials missed early COVID spread by following CDC bureaucrats: 'Possibility we could have saved lives' | 16 March 2025 | The city Health Department missed early detection of COVID-19 because it listened to CDC bureaucrats -- losing the chance to potentially spare untold numbers from death, a former agency director claims. The department's leadership decided to strictly adhere to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's rigid COVID-19 testing guidelines in early 2020, which delayed confirming the presence and transmission of the virus in the Big Apple by more than a month, writes Don Weiss in his new book, Disease Detectives: True Stories of NYC Outbreaks. Weiss, a former "surveillance director" for the Big Apple's Department of Health, was monitoring the situation from the trenches at the time. He said he was frustrated by CDC guidelines that limited testing to suspected infected patients who returned to the U.S. from Wuhan, China, and elsewhere overseas, exhibited severe lower respiratory illness or were exposed to a known case. Nearly 240 suspected COVID-19 cases were reported to the city's Health Department before the first COVID case was confirmed March 1, 2020. [The delay was carried out on purpose to allow for the scamdemic to take rook and destroy Trump's first term in office.]