MIAMI – For Jorge Jaén, the waiting time for laboratory results to confirm that he was infected with COVID-19 was only three days. He attributes it to knowing the owner of the private laboratory company he went to.
“I deteriorated very quickly. It was day and night. I went from breathing normally to having difficulty breathing very fast, “said Jaen, a 50-year-old real estate agent.
Now hospitalized in a small Miami-area hospital with pneumonia and waiting for convalescent plasma that is scarce, he worries if he might have infected a relative he lives with who is immunocompromised. You are now awaiting test results that could take more than a week in Florida right now.
As demand for COVID-19 testing continues to increase in affected Florida, so do waiting times for test results. Results can take 7-10 days, and in some cases even longer. Nationwide, more people are testing for the virus, and the response time for results has increased from a couple of days to at least a week.
Outbreaks across the Sunbelt have depleted labs and some are struggling to provide results in five to seven days. The demand for tests has caused a shortage of swabs, chemical reagents and equipment.
Florida, one of the most affected states in the country at this time had a record number of hospitalizations on Tuesday. Hospitals have welcomed an additional 517 patients since Monday. The death count was recorded at 134 and the state reported 9,440 new cases. The positivity rate among new cases in the state now exceeds 13 percent, although in Miami-Dade County it averages around 20 percent.
“An equation for disaster”
Health experts say that getting test results quickly is crucial since people are contagious during the first few days with the virus, even before showing symptoms. It is an important time for people to stay home or isolate themselves. If they go on with their lives while waiting for the test results, they could be passing the virus on to others.
Longer response times can also make tracking contacts difficult, as it depends on finding people within a short period of time.
“Response time is very important,” said Dr. Eneida Roldan, professor and executive director of the Florida International University Health Care Network.
She believes that delays are part of the reason why there is a more widespread community broadcast because there is a lack of understanding that when the test is done, it should be quarantined until the results return.
Because some Florida counties and cities have not demanded facial masks in public, there is a great challenge for those populations that do not follow public health measures.
“When you put all of that together, you have an equation for disaster,” Roldán said. When “a contact tracker comes into contact, it is extremely difficult to know who it has been in contact with.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis said last week that the state would “drive business out of testing labs that cannot meet a 48-hour response time.
“Those who can produce will get more out of the business, and I think that’s the best way to do it,” DeSantis, a Republican, said during the briefing.
The state has agreements with 16 laboratories to provide testing for state-supported testing sites. The Health Department did not respond to an email asking if this process has begun to take place.
In a published statement, Quest Diagnostics, one of the country’s largest laboratory companies, said demand for COVID-19 molecular testing continues to exceed capacity and is highest in the country’s southern, southwest, and western regions.
“However, the influx of samples to our laboratories has stabilized, at a high level, compared to last week, due to our efforts to modulate orders for low-risk patients.”
Last week, the United States Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to pool sample samples from up to four people.
To speed up response time in key neighborhoods, Roldán suggested that local labs could deploy mobile labs in hot areas.
Two weeks ago, Ines Peña, 78, lined up in front of the Miami Beach Convention Center, one of the community’s test sites, after she was exposed to the coronavirus.
After the nasal swab, he isolated himself in his South Beach apartment for fear of passing the virus on to others, if he had one.
Eight days later, unaware of the results, she called a phone number that had been provided to her and found that the test was negative. The next day, he received the official call saying that his results were ready.
But the eight-day wait was stressful for Peña.
“I was anxious,” she said. “The concern made me feel symptoms. I had to take Tylenol for the headaches. “
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