California failed to establish an effective coronavirus testing system early on, leaving it far behind — even now — in the fight against COVID-19.
Stephen Rusckowski, chief executive of Quest Diagnostics, discusses the coronavirus at a White House news conference with President Trump on March 13.
But unfortunately for Quest — and other private players such as LabCorp — the growing capacity to detect cases was only as good as supply lines. And quickly, every step in the process showed strain.For tens of thousands of Californians to receive a coronavirus test, medical staff needed just as many cotton-tipped swabs — the “simplest piece” and yet the “No. 1” issue, said Dr.
But Qiagen, a top supplier, quickly fell behind. Patients in intensive care units waited more than a week for results; some nurses had to tell families that, in the pileup, the commercial labs had lost their relative’s samples entirely.Reagent manufacturing looked like having a garden hose on hand to fight a wildfire, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Earlier that month, the pileup at Quest had become insufferable; Dr. Ng had redirected samples to Alameda County’s public health lab. But their aging equipment delivered test results by fax; the head of labs at three hospitals and several clinics found herself relegated to watching for the “LOW TONER” light to illuminate on the printer.Issues compounded when the lab equipment’s test results could not be validated.
But when Urnov told nearby hospitals he could provide free testing and results in 48 hours, the hospitals declined, saying their electronic records systems were still entangled at Quest and LabCorp. The volunteers were stunned.“We said, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ They have a direct link to a testing provider that has failed,” Urnov said. “There’s institutional inertia.”Fred Turner has always been entrepreneurial.
By early May, California had gone from 2,000 to nearly 40,000 tests per day. The Curative-Korva lab was running 10,000 of them.Dr. Zahn’s contact tracing team was back in action, and their caseload by late May was surging. Trading their gowns and gloves for phone lines and shared drives, tracers spend their days staring at computer screens glowing with the ever-growing lists of names.
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