My wife's friend who is a healthcare worker in Houston was sent home to self quarantine while awaiting test results after being exposed at work. She had to wait 17 days before getting her negative test results and being allowed to return to work. Just ridiculous that it takes this long to get a result. If a faster test isn't developed this is going to hurt the healthcare system

not saying it's the case here, but some health institutions are just doing things..."the way we've always done them" not realizing or utilizing the new tests that are available.

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If a faster test isn't developed this is going to hurt the healthcare system

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I think that train has sailed my friend.

Aggie95 said:

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not saying it's the case here, but some health institutions are just doing things..."the way we've always done them" not realizing or utilizing the new tests that are available.

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Bingo. There are much faster tests available and in stock, but the hospitals and states are not ordering them.

Our testing output has been basically flat for the last week. Therefore as more and more tests come in, backlogs are growing and testing durations are growing as well. It's because the amount of tests going in exceeds the amount of tests going out.

The bottleneck now seems to be the laboratory capacity of processing the tests.

From what I understand, these test kits that were sent out require medical providers to provide a lot of the materials to actually run the tests, i.e. assays, collection materials, analyzers, etc. I'm obviously butchering the terms. Anyways, the point is that some of these testing materials have also become bottlenecks to testing capacitors, as labs and hospitals made purchasing runs on these materials the same way people ran out to buy TP.

Finally from what I understand the PPE shortage also is playing a part in bottlenecking testing capacity.

Took two weeks to get our kids negative test. Whole house quarantined the entire time and both parents are "essential" employees. Honestly that's the only reason we even got a test, because of the likelihood of causing extensive community spread due to having to work around people.

AvidAggie said:

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Likely a dumb question...but does the accuracy of a test or the quality of a sample decrease if you wait 17 days?

Also that is ****ing ridiculous

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I saw a report from Seattle that it took so long to process the tests from quarantining EMTs at that nursing home that the tests expired and they had to get reswabbed.

Our first set of tests that we sent to our lab that we are contracted with was taking 10+ days to get results.

There are special tests for healthcare works that Tarrant Co has that is supposed to be at most a 3 day turnaround.

However another lab contacted us & said they could have turnarounds times as fast as 12 hours. So we did a test on an employee today & I had them expedite it so we will see how long that takes.

The drive through test sites in DFW have a 3-4 day turnaround time.

Oh and I forgot to mention I have a friend in BCS who was tested last Thursday and had results the following day. Honestly this friend could have wanted 17 days, but not the healthcare worker.

Dallas is at 7-9 days from a reporter, complete mess and our county judge is more worried about hobby lobby being open than getting testing results quickly.

It isn't the time the test takes, it is the backlog at the testing location. Austin Regional Clinic switched from LabCorp (who everyone seems to be sending sample to) to Clin Path Labs and cut their return time from a week++ to 2 days. A day of that is probably shipping time because CPL is in Austin but the rest is just backlog at LabCorp.

LabCorp is supposedly running 20k tests a day, 7 days a week and working to increase that. That is a lot of tests, but still not enough to keep up with demand. I think part of the problem is labcorp was one of the first labs to come online and everyone started sending samples there. I'm assuming Quest Diagnostics is in a similar situation.

Some counties have their own labs, but they are probably backlogged too.

I dont think anyone said the time was the issue, 45 minutes or 4 hours it shouldn't take 2.5 weeks to know results. Labcorp and Quest had their CEO's hand shaking trump saying they could turn 5 million tests per week at a press conference 3 weeks ago.

I hope CPL kicks their ass, we need someone to step up and get these results faster.

cle96 said:

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Had an employee go and test yesterday and she was told 2-3 weeks for results. At that point we don't even need to quarantine coworkers and she'll be better. What's the point of a test?

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Its data at that point, which is good to have, but yeah...

DFWTLR said:

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I dont think anyone said the time was the issue, 45 minutes or 4 hours it shouldn't take 2.5 weeks to know results. Labcorp and Quest had their CEO's hand shaking trump saying they could turn 5 million tests per week at a press conference 3 weeks ago.

I hope CPL kicks their ass, we need someone to step up and get these results faster.

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No they didn't. Thermo Fisher CEO said they could ship 5 mil test kits a week by April and 2 mil a week in mid March.

Lab Corp and Quest never gave numbers of what they could do. Believe me, I looked. Instead, Lab Corp and Quest formed a consortium to share data with every other private lab and plenty of other private labs have also gotten approval.

I doubt CPL can run 20k tests a day. It takes a lot of instruments to run 20k tests in a day.

http://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/

UW Virology can execute upwards of 3k tests per day.

We don't have 50 facilities in the country that can process as many or more than UW Virology?!

cle96 said:

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Had an employee go and test yesterday and she was told 2-3 weeks for results. At that point we don't even need to quarantine coworkers and she'll be better. What's the point of a test?

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Exactly, if your one of the mild cases, you have likely recovered at that point. Yes keeping them quarantined if they are positive is good regardless, but to keep a healthcare worker away from their job for 2-3 weeks now of all times is dumb.

I thought I heard Trump saying we'd be at 5 mil a month with quest and labcorp, if not then maybe I've drank too much. Has thermo kept up with what they said? I've never been a big fan of theirs, and doubt they could ramp that quick, but would assume their tests are very accurate.

Any idea on reimbursement on these tests?

No we really don't. Early on in the crisis, The Atlantic publishes on the testing capability every state had and UW virology was an order of magnitude more capable than anyone else. At the time, it was thought that they could do almost 1000 tests a day when most of the country could test less than 100 per day. LabCorp and Quest initially said they could do 2500 per day combined.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-have-been-tested-coronavirus/607597/

The fact that we are doing 100k per day is both positive and scary. It represents a 20 fold increase in capability in less than a month. But it also has plateaued indicating we can't keep up with the amount of testing needed.

And again to reiterate: Abbott promised to eventually ramp up to 50k per day manufactured on the rapid POC test. That's less than half of what we are currently doing and probably less than 1/10 of what we need. We let this get too big before we were able to bring our testing capability online. And now we will pay for it.

For statistical reporting purposes, are the test results backdated in any way, or are we going to hear about how cases are spiking down the line when a large majority of those receiving their results have already recovered?

DFWTLR said:

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I thought I heard Trump saying we'd be at 5 mil a month with quest and labcorp, if not then maybe I've drank too much. Has thermo kept up with what they said? I've never been a big fan of theirs, and doubt they could ramp that quick, but would assume their tests are very accurate.

Any idea on reimbursement on these tests?

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They were at 2 mil pretty quick. Shipped out 1.5 million the week they got approval. I know the facility in Austin that makes part of the kit scaled pretty fast with help from their R&D folks and people from their other unrelated Austin facility. They hired 30 new employees and is now going 24/7. I think production of 5 mil a week is realistic.

I believe the 5 mil is 5 mil tests. The multiplexed covid test involves a 96 well plate that can run 94 samples at a time. Since the sample prep can be handled by their sample prep robot, some of those components may be a bottle of reagent good for lots of tests.

No idea how tests are being paid for.

Seven Costanza said:

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For statistical reporting purposes, are the test results backdated in any way, or are we going to hear about how cases are spiking down the line when a large majority of those receiving their results have already recovered?

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Pretty sure positive cases are being reported when the results come in. JHU dashboard is based on when positives are announced, and I don't think anyone is reporting when the sample was taken.

Keegan99 said:

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http://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/

UW Virology can execute upwards of 3k tests per day.

We don't have 50 facilities in the country that can process as many or more than UW Virology?!

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Roche's test runs on one of two systems, one can do 500 tests in 8 hours and the other can do 1000 tests in 8 hours. Big boxes that have robotic sample handling. But when their test was approved, they mentioned 30 labs in the country have one of their systems. UW is consistent with the high end system, but if you do the math on the 50k, it works out to 3 of the big systems and 27 of the smaller ones.


Labcorp is doing 20k, but they have facilities across the country. They are trying to increase, but I'm guessing they need more instruments which takes some time to get ordered, installed, set up, and validated.