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Coronavirus Live Updates: U.S. Testing Czar Says It’s Not Possible for All Tests to Come Back Within 3 Days
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As schools, universities and businesses struggle to reopen without the coronavirus testing they need to curb outbreaks, the Trump administration’s testing czar testified to Congress Friday that it was currently impossible to get all tests back within three days.
The testing czar, Adm. Brett P. Giroir, told lawmakers that getting all coronavirus tests back between 48 and 72 hours, which many health officials have said is critical, “is not a possible benchmark we can achieve today, given the demand and the supply.”
Admiral Giroir said that it would be “absolutely” achievable in the future, and that half of all test results were being processed within 24 hours. While not all tests can be turned around within three days, he said, the average wait time for the rest was around that time or less — an assessment that is sharply at odds with what patients and health professionals around the country say they are experiencing.
He told lawmakers that the nation was now averaging about 820,000 tests each day, and that roughly half were “done in either point-of-care technologies with results in 15 minutes or less or at local hospitals for which the turnaround time is generally within 24 hours.”
And he said that three-quarters of tests from commercial labs were coming back within five days.
His comments on testing turnaround times were met with puzzlement by public health experts, who say that even if the figures are accurate, they do not reflect the reality on the ground. Reporting test results and wait times in aggregate, these experts say, does not indicate things are getting better. Testing shortages persist. And in some places, tests cannot be processed at all because of a lack of reagents — the chemicals needed to detect whether the virus is present — or lab capacity....
“Across the board, the supply chain is still fragile and fragmented,” said Amanda Harrington, director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. “We have assays we don’t know if we can run tomorrow...
Later Friday in an evening briefing in Florida with President Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida noted: “We’re doing so many tests, sometimes it takes seven to ten days to get the results back, ”He said that the state was trying to speed tests for symptomatic people, and that new point-of-care tests from the federal government should help the state get faster results.
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OPINION: Gov. Cuomo op-ed on ways to speed test results
... As states try to control the virus and as Congress considers the fourth Covid-19 relief bill, New York offers important lessons on how to fix the testing mess.
Over the last 10 weeks, New York has used testing to not only flatten the curve, but actually reduce the rate of infection since our phased reopening started. We have kept our testing rates high through partnerships with federal and local governments. In February and early March, New York worked with the Food and Drug Administration to gain the necessary approvals to begin using our own coronavirus test and mobilize a network of hundreds of labs. In April, when our labs were struggling because of shortages of a necessary chemical ingredient, reagents, President Trump and I reached an agreement that helped double New York’s capacity.
Here’s what states should do to build a sustainable testing operation, and how Congress can help. ....