Health officials warn NYC could run out of virus test swabs

[inanna]

Source: Associated Press

The Associated Press
13 April 2020, 09:21
2 min read

NEW YORK -- New York City is in danger of running out of swabs for COVID-19 tests and is urging medical providers to continue testing only patients who are gravely ill, the city health department said in a memo to health care providers.

“As the swab supply continues to decline, there is a real possibility hospitals will completely run out,” the April 11 health alert said. “At this time, providers are reminded to only test hospitalized patients in order to preserve resources that are needed to diagnose and appropriately manage patients with more severe illness.”

The warning came amid repeated pleas from New York City and state officials for the federal government to provide widespread testing in order to move to a containment phase in the coronavirus outbreak.

“We can’t make that transition back to normal without testing on a much larger scale,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday on MSNBC.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/health-officials-warn-nyc-run-virus-test-swabs-70116678

[Arkansas Granny]

1. No swabs means fewer tests which means fewer cases reported.

And Trump says "Look at those numbers going down. Time to open up the economy!"

[gibraltar72]

2. This has been the artificial bottleneck to keep his numbers down

all the time. There is a reason he's seizing test supplies.