The United States faced a new bottleneck in coronavirus testing this month as results were delayed. In late July and early August, it took an entire week for the nation’s largest diagnostics companies, LabCorp and Quest, to recheck the results.
When other people found out they had tested positive, they had enough time to spread the virus to others.
This led to health care facilities being more selective about who they tested. The result: The weekly average of daily tests is now 13% lower than it was at the end of July, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
The U. S. has conducted about 708,000 tests on average over the past week, compared with just 818,000 at the end of July. Some states have noticed even more dramatic drops: The weekly average of coronavirus tests administered in Texas has fallen 45% over the past year. beyond the month. Arizona fell 36% and Florida fell 27%.
This is the opposite direction the evidence is going, experts say.
“One of the biggest hurdles of the lockdown has been the fact that we don’t have a testing strategy and other people don’t know their status,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. . Internal to the business community. ” When you look at the countries that have controlled to get involved, they haven’t done anything extraordinary. They tested, tracked and isolated. “
LabCorp and Quest say they have now reduced response times to two or three days. And, on average, new cases in the U. S. they have fallen by 18% in the last two weeks.
“The decline in infections that we’re seeing is real,” Adm. Brett Giroir, the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for physical fitness, said in a phone call Thursday.
But some fitness experts say this drop may still be partly the result of a reduction in testing. Proof of this is the growing proportion of positive coronavirus tests in some states. While the national percentage of positive tests has remained relatively strong over the past month, the percentage of positive tests in Texas has doubled in the past two weeks, from about 12% to 24%.
“When you see the percentage positivity increase, it normally means that not all cases are captured through this system,” Adalja said in June. “All the new cases are already on the radar of public health officials, and that’s probably not the case where percent positivity is rising. “
The World Health Organization recommends that governments maintain a positivity rate of 5% or less for at least 14 days, or limit themselves to one outbreak. Currently, 35 states in EE. UU. no comply with this directive. And thirteen states, including Arizona, Florida and Texas, have positivity rates above 10%.
“Looking at the scenario as a nation doesn’t give an intelligent picture of this outbreak, because it’s actually heterogeneous and has been regional,” Adalja said. “There are places like Pennsylvania and New York that are reducing the percentage of positivity, while other sales options are expanding it. “
California’s data may also be skewed, as between 250,000 and 300,000 fitness records would likely have been delayed from July 25 due to a technical glitch in the state’s data reporting system. Most of those fitness records were coronavirus tests, but California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said Friday that he’s still confident that cases in California are declining.
The U. S. tests more people per capita than any other country: about 204 tests per 100,000 people. But it also accounts for a quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases.
“Part of the explanation for why we have a massive call [for testing] in the U. S. is that of the U. S. UU. es because massive outbreaks are happening,” Dr. Kelly told Business Insider. Carolyn Cannuscio, a social epidemiologist who directs the touch tracking program at the University of Pennsylvania. . .
Slow or inadequate testing makes it difficult to identify new cases in time to prevent the spread of an outbreak, he added.
“We have a flawed verification system, which puts us at risk of failing contact tracing because other people are waiting so long for their verification results that we’ve missed a critical moment to advise those other people to stay home and avoid infecting others. “” Cannuscio said. We also missed a critical era in identifying others who might have been in contact with their infectious era. “
Ideally, Adalja said, the U. S. would reach a point where everyone would have to be tested.
“The next step is to make sure that there are enough incentives in place to fund a physically powerful testing program, which allows each and every American to know their prestige very temporarily through at-home testing,” he said. “It allows us to keep going, because part of the challenge we’ve had from the beginning is not knowing who’s inflamed and who’s not. “
Susie Neilson contributed reporting.
Advertising
POPULAR CATEGORIES