Surge in U.S. coronavirus cases triggers screening hold-ups throughout the country as laboratories rush to maintain

The rise in U.S. coronavirus cases has laboratories throughout the country falling back in processing and providing test results with the turn-around time for Covid-19 tests taking days to a week or longer for numerous clients, 2 of the nation’s most significant laboratory diagnostics business stated Monday.

“We attribute this demand primarily to the rapid, continuing spread of COVID-19 infections across the nation but particularly in the South, Southwest and West regions of the country,” Quest Diagnostics stated in a declaration. The test producer included that it can now carry out as much as 125,000 tests each day, approximately double its capability compared to 2 months earlier.

“Despite that dramatic increase, demand for testing is increasing even faster,” the business stated. “As a result, our average turnaround time for reporting test results is slightly more than 1 day for our priority 1 patients. However, our average turnaround time for all other populations is 7 or more days.”

Priority one clients consist of healthcare facility clients, pre-operative clients in intense care settings and symptomatic health care employees, the business stated.

Quick screening turn-around is essential to the U.S. reaction, health authorities state, so that contaminated people can be rapidly separated and contact tracers can discover possibly exposed individuals early in their infection. Quest stated it is working to increase capability as rapidly as possible, however “global supply constraints continue to be an issue.”

The business stated it is dealing with brand-new innovation to enhance its screening capability and cause brand-new partners to faster process test outcomes. 

“Yet, we want patients and healthcare providers to know that we will not be in a position to reduce our turnaround times as long as cases of COVID-19 continue to increase dramatically across much of the United States,” the business stated. “This is not just a Quest issue. The surge in COVID-19 cases affects the laboratory industry as a whole.”

LabCorp, another coronavirus diagnostic test producer, echoed Quest’s issues, stating that need for screening is exceeding their capability. The business stated it is processing more than 130,000 tests each day and prepares to ramp that as much as 150,000 each day by the end of the month.

“Until recently, we have been able to deliver test results back to patients on average between 1-2 days from the date of specimen pickup,” a LabCorp spokesperson stated in a declaration to CNBC. “But with significant increases in testing demand and constraints in the availability of supplies and equipment, the average time to deliver results may now be 4-6 days from specimen pickup. For hospitalized patients, the average time for results is faster.”

The U.S. has actually processed approximately more than 665,000 tests each day in between July 1 and July 12, according to a CNBC analysis of information gathered by the Covid Tracking Project, an independent volunteer company introduced by reporters at The Atlantic. That’s up from an everyday average of simply over 174,000 diagnostic tests processed nationally each day through April, according to CNBC’s analysis.

Since the start of the break out, public health authorities and epidemiologists have actually required the U.S. to invest considerably in test production and scaling up of the screening facilities. Harvard University released a report in April that stated the U.S. would require to increase screening capability to a minimum of 5 million tests a day by early June and 20 million each day by late July in order to resume the economy.

However, the findings were dismissed by Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health who supervises of the federal government’s screening effort, as “an Ivory Tower, unreasonable benchmark,” including that it was not required based upon the most recent modelling at the time. 

Last month, as brand-new cases of the coronavirus were starting to rise once again throughout parts of the U.S., President Donald Trump stated at a project rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that the growing break outs throughout the nation was because of increased screening. He included that he informed authorities to “slow the testing down, please.”