NEW YORK (Reuters) - COVID-19 testing supplies distributed by the federal government have failed quality checks and are arriving late, Washington state’s top health official said in a letter to a senior administration official, warning of problems as cases spike.

Several state lab directors and the director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories also told Reuters that supplies were short.

“The nascent federal supply effort for COVID-19 testing has been beset by logistical problems that impede our pandemic response and undermine our shared goals,” Washington state Secretary of Health John Wiesman said in his June 30 letter to U.S.

The supply chain problem "threatens to limit our overall testing capacity at a critical time in the pandemic response," he said.

Scott Shone, the director of North Carolina’s public health laboratory, said he had been told by the federal government and clinical labs in his state that Roche would not be able to ramp up production of reagents, chemicals used in tests, until later this year, and that Danaher’s Cepheid would not be able to ramp up supplies until early 2021.

Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, says he has heard from a handful of state health laboratories in the last two weeks that they are short on reagents or other supplies they need to do COVID testing.