If you assumed that the rate of COVID-19 Testing would be increasing steadily as testing capacity increased, in effort to catch up with the rate of new infections, you would be wrong. That would be too logical for Trump and his incompetent crew. Their narrow criteria for getting tested may well have become a rigid bottleneck.
Despite efforts to expand, the continued glitches in the U.S. testing system are threatening to impede attempts to re-open the economy and return to normal life.
By DAVID LIM
The number of coronavirus tests analyzed each day by commercial labs in the U.S. plummeted by more than 30 percent over the past week, even though new infections are still surging in many states and officials are desperately trying to ramp up testing so the country can reopen.
One reason for the drop-off may be the narrow testing criteria that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last revised in March. The agency’s guidelines prioritize hospitalized patients, health care workers and those thought to be especially vulnerable to the disease, such as the elderly. Health providers have been turning away others in part due to shortages of the swabs used to collect samples.
It’s not clear whether demand has peaked among the groups on the CDC’s priority list. But after being overwhelmed for weeks, commercial labs say they are now sitting with unused testing capacity waiting for samples to arrive.
I guess we can forget about reopening the economy anytime soon, in the absence of adequate testing. And Mr.Trump has shown little interest in testing, and it shows.
“We're at a really critical juncture, and the supply chain has not yet caught up,” said Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
“The fact remains that you can't implement the tests unless you have materials to perform the test,” he said.
That becomes problematic as public health experts warn widespread testing is a prerequisite to successfully reopening the economy.
While testing has improved significantly since the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., it is still not where it needs to be. Shortages of swabs, reagents or chemicals used to process tests, pipettes and other goods have threatened progress.