Even for people who are able to get tested for COVID-19, there can be a frustratingly long wait for results. It can take days, sometimes a week. Here's why it takes so long — and how that might be changing 👇
We asked experts to help explain why the turnaround time for results can vary widely — from hours to days or even a week — and how that might be changing.First, a sample is taken from a patient's nose or throat, using a special swab. That swab goes into a tube and is sent to a lab. Some large hospitals have on-site molecular test labs, but most samples are sent to outside laboratories for processing. More on that later.
After the RNA is extracted, technicians also must carefully mix special chemicals with each sample and run those combinations in a machine for analysis, a process calledA lab technician adds vials to a Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction testing device at a Co-Diagnostics Inc. facility in Salt Lake City.George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Large commercial labs like those run by companies such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp were given the go-ahead by the FDA late last month to start testing, too. Even so, supply is not keeping up with demand, Roche CEO Severin Schwan told CNBC Monday. Roche won the first approval from the FDA for a test kit"Demand continues to be much higher than supply," Schwan told
Even at such hospitals, the tests are often prioritized for patients who have been admitted and staff who might have been exposed to COVID-19, says Chahine. His lab can process 93 samples at a time and run a few cycles a day – up to 279 tests per day, he says.A doctor examines Juan Vasquez as part of a COVID-19 check inside a testing tent outside the emergency department at St. Barnabas hospital in New York City last week.
tests from two companies that promise results in 45 minutes or less — those will be available only in hospitals that have special equipment to run them. One of those companies, Cepheid of Sunnyvale, Calif., says about 5,000 U.S. hospitals already have the equipment needed to process these tests. Both firms say they will ship to the hospitals soon, but have given few specifics on quantity or timing.
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