Americans face testing delays as COVID-19 cases surge

LOS ANGELES — Four months, three million confirmed infections, and over 130,000 deaths into the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, Americans confronted with an alarming resurgence of COVID-19 are facing long lines at testing sites and going a week or more without receiving a diagnosis.

Some sites are running out of kits even as coronavirus testing is ramped up.

Labs are reporting shortages of materials and don’t have enough workers to process the tests, leading to severe backups that could worsen as economies reopen and new infections emerge.

Scenes of testing sites turning away people and motorists waiting in the summer heat in long lines separated into numerous lanes by traffic cones have left Americans frustrated and wondering why the U.S. can’t seem to get its act together, especially after it was given fair warning over the past several months as the virus spread from China to hot spots such as Italy, Spain and New York.

‘A hot mess’

“It’s a hot mess,” said 47-year-old Jennifer Hudson of Tucson, Arizona. “The fact that we’re relying on companies and we don’t have a national response to this, it’s ridiculous … It’s keeping people who need tests from getting tests.”

It took Hudson five days to make an appointment through a CVS pharmacy near her home. She managed to book a drive-up test on July 5, more than a week after her symptoms — fatigue, shortness of breath, headache and sore throat — first emerged. The clinic informed her that her results would also probably be delayed.

The number of tests per day in the U.S. is up to about 640,000 on average, an increase from around 518,000 two weeks ago, according to an analysis. Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. are running at over 50,000, breaking records at practically every turn.

In an especially alarming indicator, the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is on the rise across nearly the entire country, hitting almost 27% in Arizona, 19% in Florida and 17% in South Carolina.

As more people are tested, an increase in the raw number of positive tests is to be expected. But if the virus is being brought under control, then the percentage of positive results relative to the total number of tests should be coming down.

Other developments

While the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. hit three million Wednesday according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, health officials have said that because of inadequate testing and the many mild cases that have gone unreported or unrecognized, the real number of infections is about 10 times higher. That would amount to almost 10 per cent of the U.S. population.

Most New York City students will return to school in the fall two or three days a week and learn online the rest of the time under a plan announced Mayor Bill de Blasio. He said schools can’t accommodate all their students at any one time and maintain social distancing. The school system in New York is by far the biggest in the nation, with 1.1 million students. It has been closed since March.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week said it will open free “surge testing” sites in three cities that are seeing significant increases in cases and hospitalizations — Jacksonville, Florida; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Edinburg, Texas. Each site will be able to conduct as many as 5,000 tests a day, with results coming back in three to five days, officials said.

In Georgia, one of the states where cases are surging, officials are rushing to expand testing capacity as demand rises sharply and threatens to overwhelm six major sites around Atlanta, said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond.

“If you project this out over the next three weeks, we can’t handle it,” he said.

New Orleans residents on Wednesday were turned away from a free testing site for a third consecutive day after it reached its daily allotment of tests. Health care providers are running low on trays and chemicals needed to run machines used in the tests.

“There are still supply chain issues with getting these products from China and other places,” said the city’s health director, Dr. Jennifer Avegno.

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