Wilma Thomas, right, registered nurse, and Ricky Vargas, medical assistant, process 50 to 65 patients per day for COVID-19 testing at AltaMed Health Services in Anaheim on Thursday, July 9, 2020.
Allen J. Schaben | Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The surge in US coronavirus cases has slowed laboratories across the country in processing and delivering test results with the turnaround time for Covid-19 tests that take anywhere from days to a week. or more for many patients, two of the nation’s largest laboratory diagnostic companies said Monday.
“We attribute this demand primarily to the rapid and continuous spread of COVID-19 infections across the country, but particularly in the southern, southwestern and western regions of the country,” Quest Diagnostics said in a statement. The test maker added that it can now perform up to 125,000 tests per day, about double its capacity compared to two months ago.
“Despite that dramatic increase, the demand for evidence is increasing even faster,” the company said. “As a result, our average response time to report test results is just over 1 day for our priority 1 patients. However, our average response time for all other populations is 7 or more days.”
Priority one patients include hospitalized patients, preoperative patients in acute care settings and symptomatic healthcare workers, the company said.
A rapid change in testing is crucial to the U.S. response, health officials say, so that infected people can quickly isolate themselves and contact trackers can find people potentially exposed early in their infection. Quest said it is working to increase capacity as quickly as possible, but “global supply constraints remain a problem.”
The company said it is working on new technologies to improve its testing capabilities and attract new partners to process test results more quickly.
“However, we want patients and healthcare providers to know that we will not be in a position to reduce our response times as COVID-19 cases continue to rise dramatically in much of the United States,” the company said. “This is not just a Quest problem. The increase in COVID-19 cases affects the laboratory industry in general.”
LabCorp, another maker of coronavirus diagnostic tests, echoed Quest’s concerns, saying demand for tests is outstripping capacity. The company said it is processing more than 130,000 tests per day and plans to increase it to 150,000 per day by the end of the month.
“Until recently, we have been able to deliver test results to patients on average 1-2 days from the date of sample collection,” a LabCorp spokeswoman said in a statement to CNBC. “But with significant increases in demand for testing and limitations in the availability of supplies and equipment, the average time to deliver results can now be 4-6 days from sample collection. For inpatients, the average time to obtain results is faster. “
The United States has processed an average of more than 665,000 tests per day between July 1 and July 12, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by the Covid Tracking Project, an independent volunteer organization launched by journalists at The Atlantic. That represents a daily average of just over 174,000 diagnostic tests processed nationwide per day through April, according to CNBC analysis.
Since the outbreak began, public health officials and epidemiologists have called for the United States to invest significantly in test fabrication and expansion of testing infrastructure. Harvard University released a report in April that said the US would need to increase testing capacity to at least 5 million tests a day in early June and 20 million a day in late July to reopen the economy.
However, the findings were ruled out by Admiral Brett Giroir, the undersecretary of health who is in charge of the government’s testing effort, as “an ivory tower, unreasonable benchmark,” adding that it was not necessary under the latest model at that moment. .
Last month, when new cases of coronavirus were starting to emerge again in parts of the U.S., President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that the growing outbreaks across the country were due to an increase Of the tests. He added that he told officials to “delay the tests, please.”
.
