Even as new and faster tests become available, lengthy delays to obtain results continue and test materials are running low, compounding the crises hospitals are facing.
Three weeks ago, Dr. Elaine Cham, a pathologist at a large children’s hospital in California, had a sense that the nation’s coronavirus testing mess was finally getting under control.
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She could send tests to a lab at Stanford University Medical Center and get the results within a day.
When backlogs grew at Stanford, Dr. Cham starting sending tests to Quest Diagnostics, a major laboratory company that has been ramping up its testing capacity. But the turnaround for results could be 13 days, she said, so her hospital switched to the University of California, San Francisco, for a two-to-three day wait.
“We simply said, ‘This is ridiculous,’” said Dr. Cham, who works at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.
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Testing availability remains a signature failure of the battle against the coronavirus in the United States, despite President Trump’s boast last week that he got a rapid test and results within minutes. And Vice President Mike Pence has repeatedly promised that Americans will be able to get tests at their doctors’ offices, although the timeline for routine access may be months away.
More and more rapid tests are coming onto the market and private companies like Quest and LabCorp are now running thousands of tests a day. But as the virus has spread from state to state infecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, demand for testing has overwhelmed many labs and testing sites. Doctors and officials around the country say that lengthy delays in getting results have persisted and that continued uneven access to tests has prolonged rationing and hampered patient care. In addition, swabs and chemicals needed to run the tests are in short supply in many of the nation’s hot zones.