Delays and Shortages Exacerbate Coronavirus Testing Gaps in the U.S. – The New York Times

Federal inquiries have begun to determine how the nations testing capacity turned into such a debacle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had manufacturing errors with the first test it devised for public health labs around the country, and so testing in the states stalled as the virus began to spread in Washington State, New York and California. The Food and Drug Administration, charged with approving the test, was so frustrated that the agency pushed for the C.D.C. to stop making it on site and instead send it to Integrated DNA Technologies, an outside lab.

The F.D.A., for its part, was slow to recognize the danger of the pandemic, and how critical testing by commercial labs and hospitals would be as the virus spread.

In early March, the nations two largest commercial labs, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, started testing, and they have acknowledged that their labs around the country were overwhelmed. Quests backlog is 80,000, according to the company, down from 160,000 on March 25. LabCorp says it has caught up, and now has a turnaround of four to five days from pickup.

Supplies of test swabs have gotten so low that most hospitals test only their most vulnerable patients, typically those being admitted.

Wendy Bost, a spokeswoman for Quest, which introduced its coronavirus tests on March 9, said the company had ramped up its testing and could now process more than 35,000 tests per day over 200,000 each week at its 12 labs around the country. Last week, Quest asked hospitals to identify health care workers and symptomatic patients for priority processing and she said the company was providing results now on an average of a day for that population.

To date, Quest has processed nearly 550,000 coronavirus tests, Ms. Bost said. The current turnaround time for other patients, she said, is now two to three days although she acknowledged there was a longer wait in the areas most affected, like Chicago, New York, New Jersey and Miami.

LabCorp has four labs running, also averaging about 35,000 to 40,000 coronavirus tests each day, the company said. Mike Geller, a LabCorp spokesman, said it had tested about 500,000 samples, and that the time for processing varied, based on demand.

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Delays and Shortages Exacerbate Coronavirus Testing Gaps in the U.S. - The New York Times