Testing Is on the Brink of Paralysis. That's Very Bad News.
As Covid-19 cases surge to their highest levels in dozens of states, the nation’s testing effort is on the brink of paralysis because of widespread delays in getting back results. And that is very bad news, because even if testing is robust, the pandemic cannot be controlled without rapid results.
This is the latest failure in our national response to the worst pandemic in a century. Since the Trump administration has abdicated responsibility, governors must join forces to meet this threat before the cataclysm that Florida is experiencing becomes the reality across the country. Testing should be the governors’ first order of business.
Despite President Trump’s boast early this month that testing “is so massive and so good,” the United States’ two largest commercial testing companies, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, have found themselves overwhelmed and unable to return results promptly. Delays averaging a week or longer for all but top-priority hospital patients and symptomatic health care workers are disastrous for efforts to slow the spread of the virus.
Without rapid results, it is impossible to isolate new infections quickly enough to douse flare-ups before they grow. Slow diagnosis incapacitates contact tracing, which entails not only isolating those who test positive but also alerting the infected person’s contacts quickly so they can quarantine, too, and avoid exposing others to the virus unwittingly.
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Vice President Mike Pence’s casual invocation of an “extraordinary national success in testing” in a recent call with governors was flatly wrong, as is the president’s similar trumpeting of testing success. These claims contribute to a false sense among the public that testing may have had early stumbles but is ramping up slowly but surely.
The reality is that the spread of the virus has vastly outpaced the expansion of testing capacity. That spread in turn results in more illness and therefore more tests to process, which further slows down turnaround time in a vicious cycle. The dedication and patience of thousands of people waiting in serpentine lines of cars for hours to be tested are wasted when the results aren’t returned quickly enough.
We are at this point because of the absence of a coordinated federal plan, and, indeed, because of a White House that seems actively hostile to producing one. The nation’s governors and state legislators must fill the void.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/opinion/coronavirus-testing-us.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
but once again, put party before country. 