There were news that China's health authorities in Hubei and Beijing told local testing companies to return positive samples or destroy those samples during the

There were news that China's health authorities in Hubei and Beijing told local testing companies to return positive samples or destroy those samples during the crucial early days of the spread of the virus[1]. [1]https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early-signs-of-the-coronavirus-were-spotted-spread-and-throttled-in-china https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early-signs-... Political and censorship considerations aside, one possible reason for doing this could've been to ensure that the tests were all centralized and "valid" while preventing accidental leakage of the virus from local testing companies. Yet this kind of policy precisely prevented the virus from being quickly identified. The CDC's focus on the validity of the tests and its refusal to let local hospitals test for the virus mirrors this mistake. Even if the CDC did not actively try to suppress information, it is acting too slow.