Four years before the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fumbled the nation's chance to begin effective early testing for the novel coronavirus, the agency similarly mishandled its efforts to detect another dreaded pathogen.

Amid a feared outbreak of the newly emerged Zika virus, senior CDC officials in 2016 sidelined an effective test for it - and instead directed public health laboratories nationwide to use a more complicated test that failed about one-third of the time.

The agency's response to Zika now stands as an unheeded prequel for how the CDC stumbled this year as it confronted the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 125,000 lives nationwide.

Both Zika and the coronavirus originated overseas and became American health emergencies that have challenged the CDC's ability to carry out its fundamental mission to rapidly identify and contain newly arrived pathogens.

In both emergencies, the CDC pressured the public health labs to shelve the effective tests and to use less reliable test kits manufactured by the agency that sought to detect multiple pathogens. The agency stood behind the troubled test kits despite internal data indicating they were flawed. Ultimately, the CDC notified the public lab officials that they could switch to more effective tests.

With Zika, the CDC took nearly a year to change course. With the coronavirus, the agency took more than a month, delaying a nationwide rollout of effective testing as the malady it causes, covid-19, erupted into the nation's most deadly infectious disease in a century. Clinicians and public health officials believe the delay caused additional deaths, although the total number is uncertain.

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