For the richest, most technologically advanced (so we say) country in the world, this is really pathetic.
The long testing turnaround times are making it impossible for the United States to replicate the central strategy used by other countries to effectively contain the virus — test, trace and isolate. Like catching any killer, speed is of the essence when it comes to the coronavirus.
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“It makes contact tracing almost useless. By the time a person is getting results, they already have symptoms, their contacts may already have symptoms and have gone on to infect others.”
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More efficient testing — such as in South Korea, where results are often given the next day — might [prevent people] from getting the virus. But such turnarounds seem out of reach in the United States because of a lack of federal coordination, supply shortages and surging demand as outbreaks in some states spiral out of control.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the United States has been plagued by testing problems. In the past four months, testing capacity expanded dramatically; roughly 40 million tests have now been conducted. But the federal government never fixed fundamental infrastructure problems, experts say.
WaPo
Well, Trump told us all that he demanded "his people" to slow down the testing.
"[O]ur federal response was to do the very least possible. So each time the system is stretched now, it breaks down all over again,” said Ashish K. Jha, who directs the Harvard Global Health Institute. “It’s frustrating because . . . it’s not like, ‘Oh my god, we just figured out we need to do testing.’ We’ve literally been talking about this for months.”
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Coronavirus tests must be covered by insurance under the Cares Act, and free tests are available at the federal, state and local level. As demand has surged, it has created backlogs and choke points at almost every step of the testing chain.
“It’s not shortages of any one thing. It’s now spot shortages of all of them,” said Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
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“Arizona is a hot spot, and it cannot stop testing,” she said. Right now, about a quarter of tests in Arizona are coming back positive, an indication that many other infections are going undetected.
Aguirre said she believes long wait times for results — up to 14 days — have discouraged many from getting tested.
Understandable.
Trump administration officials Friday said testing has improved dramatically and blamed state and local officials for some missteps.
In a statement, the testing czar appointed by President Trump, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, blamed some problems “on mismanagement and miscommunication at the state level, and a lack of flexibility to use resources.” He noted that compared with mid-March — when daily tests numbered in the tens of thousands — “we are currently completing over 600,000 tests per day, and last week reached over 700,000 in one day, clearly demonstrating our efforts toward a million tests per day by the fall will be achieved.”
Giroir was appointed in March to focus exclusively on testing but resumed his responsibilities this month at his regular job at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Did he displease Trump?
HHS spokeswoman Mia Heck said turnaround times at large commercial laboratories are “generally increasing.” In about half of states, she said, it takes two to three days on average to get results, and in 24 states, it takes three to four days.
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But because testing is being conducted by a mix of commercial, public and hospital labs, the average waiting time is not known with precision state by state.
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“Some labs have indicated that their turnaround time could be as long as 10 days,” said Jason Mahon, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
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Only two states have [reported] average turnaround times as long as four to five days [...] . But that does not include further delays in getting the results to patients.
Which is the point, if you want to get a handle on the outbreak.
What’s still missing and urgently needed is a federally coordinated plan “assessing our testing capacity and identifying bottlenecks, forecasting what our future testing needs would be,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. Without that, Nuzzo said, the U.S. response remains “a kind of janky flotilla, that, you know, is put together with gum and duct tape.”
As long as Trump is in office, we're not going to get a federally coordinated plan.
This week, eight organizations representing those working in U.S. labs sent a letter to Vice President Pence pleading for help with test supplies.
One of those groups, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, said it raised those same concerns last month in a call with Giroir, who said he had designated an official in each state to oversee the test supply chain and promised to give the organizations a list of those officials so they could direct pleas for help to them.
But the group never received that list and has not heard back from the administration.
“Instead, we’re all still competing against each other like the Hunger Games for critical supplies,” said David Grenache, president-elect of the association and chief scientific officer of a lab in New Mexico.
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Some hospitals have begun producing their own chemical reagents — substances used to conduct laboratory tests — because they can’t find any on the market, experts say. States and cities have resorted to negotiating directly with foreign governments for supplies.
Scandalous.
Seattle, for instance, partnered with the University of Washington and has been able to maintain free, unrestricted testing with one- to two-day turnaround times.
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“As a region, you could pool your dollars, sit down with national and international suppliers and tackle the problem,” Jha said. “That said, there’s probably a limit to what states can do. We as a country are just not designed to have absentee federal government.”
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HHS spokeswoman Heck said, “At this time, HHS and FEMA are meeting all state testing needs.” HHS noted that the federal government has sent many testing supplies to states, and that states are responsible for distributing them to labs.
Not our fault; not our problem.
“You’re going to see so many more symptomatic people, who won’t know if they have the flu or coronavirus and are going to need testing for both,” said Kelly Wroblewski, infectious-disease director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “We’re expecting a coming crush of tests, even more than we’re seeing now.”
