FDA Reacts to Coronavirus as Stimulus Bill Passes

The FDA is scrambling to meet the demands imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, including a series of guidances dealing with a variety of issues. However, the predicament has also prompted two pieces of legislation, one an economic stimulus package and the other a bill that would tie the FDA’s hands where regulation of lab-developed tests is concerned.

After considerable wrangling, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives sent the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act, or H.R. 748) to the Oval Office, which President Trump signed into law March 27. This was the latest – but perhaps not the last – of legislative packages to offset the damage done by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The FDA has ramped up a series of guidance documents to deal with the pandemic. One of the earliest policy documents was a Feb. 29 guidance by the FDA’s device center, which the agency updated March 16 to give the states more leeway to ramp up testing. The pandemic was widely seen as potentially crimping ongoing clinical trials, leading the FDA to post a guidance to deal with such concerns. In a March 18 statement, the agency acknowledged that protocol deviations may be unavoidable, and that study protocols may thus have to be amended. One of the related changes the FDA will allow is the use of telemedicine for some patient follow-up appointments.

Another piece of the regulatory puzzle for coronavirus in the U.S. is the FDA’s enforcement policy for ventilators and other respiratory devices. This policy guidance spells out the conditions under which product labels and device functionality of ventilators and other respiratory devices would not be subject to the usual enforcement standards. The emphasis here, the agency said, is to allow manufacturers to add production lines to existing sites and to allow manufacturing at alternate sites. Among the 13 product codes listed within the scope of the document are those for oxygen conservers and anesthesia gas machines.

The agency’s device center has routinely updated a coronavirus FAQ for diagnostic testing, including updates on swabbing procedures and sites that would be acceptable for testing. In a March 23 statement, the FDA made note of a concern that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be passed along during fecal microbiota transplantation procedures. There is also some concern that cancer patients may be at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 due to compromise of their immune systems.

The FDA also took action on respirator masks in a March 27 statement to the CDC, which authorizes the use of all disposable filtering facepiece respirators that have been approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The scope of this policy includes NIOSH-approved respirators that have passed product expiry, assuming these items are not damaged and have been stored in the appropriate conditions. Two days earlier, the FDA dropped an enforcement policy document for the use of face and respirator masks, which includes some conditions for reprocessing of these items.

Bill Would Ban FDA Regulation of LDTs

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has drafted a bill that would disallow FDA regulation of lab-developed tests, at least in part a reaction to the agency’s laggardly response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Paul said in a March 18 statement that S. 3512 would remove “unnecessary government barriers that have drastically slowed the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Verified Innovative Testing in American Laboratories (VITAL) Act of 2020 would affirm that the Public Health Service Act “governs all aspects” of lab-developed testing procedures, according to the associated fact sheet.

The bill states that “all aspects of a laboratory-developed testing procedures shall be regulated” under Section 353 of the Public Health Service Act, and that “no aspects of laboratory-developed testing procedures shall be regulated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.” This would apply during public health emergencies as well as during periods of normal activity.

Paul’s bill comes shortly after two members of the House of Representatives resurrected the Verifying Accurate, Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act, which has been modified from previous iterations to address the COVID-19 outbreak. Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) said their legislation would create a new product category for diagnostic and lab tests, but they also point to the need to allow labs to respond quickly to public health crises. The bill would allow developers to electronically file their tests for FDA review.

There is a companion bill for the VALID Act in the Senate, but there is also some question as to whether either of these bills will pick up any traction this year, given the impact of the coronavirus on congressional schedules. It might be noted that discussions regarding the fiscal 2021 budget have been displaced by the COVID-19 outbreak at least for the time being, and that the upcoming election is likely to bring a halt to routine legislative activity by the end of August.