As coronavirus cases surge in much of the country, issues with testing availability and access have once again arisen in nearly every aspect of the testing supply chain, local officials and hospital leaders in several states told ABC News.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has recommended that states including Texas, Arizona and Florida pause their reopenings amid a rise in COVID-19 cases.
“Our lack of initial testing prevented early intervention,” added Brownstein, an ABC News contributor. “Our inability to ramp up testing prevented us from mitigating the impact on morbidity and mortality. And now our lack of test availability and timely diagnosis five months into the pandemic will directly contribute prolonging this first wave.”Nearly 65,000 new cases of the virus were reported across the country on Thursday, a new record, and while the U.S.
Spokespeople for HHS and FEMA said those supplies are then distributed to localities at the direction of the state. The FEMA spokesperson added the agency is committed to supporting states and urged them to coordinate closely with the federal government. As of Wednesday, more than 30 states reported a test positivity rate -- the number of total tests that come back positive -- over 5%, a threshold recommended by the World Health Organization.Johns Hopkins University say provides insights into “whether a community is conducting enough testing to find cases.” According to the experts, “If a community’s positivity is high, it suggests that that community may largely be testing the sickest patients and possibly missing milder or asymptomatic cases.
Now the state has reimposed lockdowns in 19 counties with record numbers of cases, and Gov. Gavin Newsom last week urged hospitals and testing labs to prioritize testing for those most at risk for spreading the virus to others, including those already showing symptoms and vulnerable populations like nursing homes.
He floated the possibility, like California, of limiting testing availability to symptomatic patients if the shortage in supplies continues, though he said the state is not there yet. Jo Lynn Garing, a spokesperson for a leading high-volume test manufacturing company Roche Diagnostics, said the company is aware the"demand for diagnostic tests and the instruments [to] conduct them has continued to outstrip supply since the beginning of the pandemic."
In New York, where cases mostly remain flat and just above 1% of tests are returning positive, private labs, which process the majority of tests conducted in the state, now take up to a week to return results due to an increased demand from the rest of the country after the federal government asks those labs to prioritize high-risk states, according to state officials.
A FEMA spokesperson told ABC News the agency has provided Oregon with 206,000 swabs and 185,550 media as of Thursday.
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